[Solved] After Re-applying thermal paste, Temp skyrocketed

Hello.

CPU=e8400 core 2 duo(not overclocked)
Heat Sink=stock
thermal paste=Dynex silver compound

I decided to clean my cpu's heat sink. Before putting it back on, I scraped off the old thermal paste, which came pre-applied, with a plastic card. I cleaned off the cpu heatspreader and the heat sink plate with 91% isopropyl and coffee filters(heard they leave very little debris). I have made 2 attempts to reapply new thermal paste(Dynex), and the temperature of my CPU is still far higher than it ever was. Temperatures are:

Idle=55-65 C minimum
Spikes up to 80 C when loading a graphic intensive game
before removing the heat sink to clean it, CPU temp rarely exceeded 55 C even under load.

Attempt 1: Put a dab on the center of the CPU heatspreader, and spread it out evenly with a card until entire surface was covered.

Attempt 2: Put a rice grain-sized dab on center of CPU heatspreader, but this time just let the Heat Sink spread it out as I affixed it.

Temperatures were equally high after each attempt.

My theories to explain the temperature increase:

1. The paste simply needs time to work in.
-But it has been 2 hours with no improvement whatsoever

2. I caused considerable microscopic damage to the heat sink plate when I scraped off the old paste, which caused too many heat-retaining pits too form.
-But even if the surface of the heat sink was made more irregular, couldn't the paste just seep into all the new pits anyway?

3. The thermal paste just sucks
-Couldn't imagine it sucking more than the pre-applied stuff

4. The Heat sink isn't attached firmly enough
-I got it in there really tightly. Even rotated it 1-2 degrees to supposedly remove air bubbles in the paste.


Cleaning this heat sink out has caused more harm than good! Any insights?

solved. embarrassing though. I was re-installing the heatsink each time while the motherboard was still in the case. I pressed as hard as I could on the plastic pins without breaking the MB, and figured that would be enough. The heatsink wouldn't move when i jostled it.

After taking the motherboard out of the case, I could see that one of the pins was not fully in place, creating a slight gap between the CPU heatspreader and the Heat sink plate. Only while holding the back of the MB while putting enormous pressure on the pin, was I able to get it in all the way.

ADVICEont be stupid like me, always take out the motherboard to install a heatsink!

no worries glad we could help