Most modern coolers will provide sufficient pressure to spread a pea sized amount of thermal paste to cover the whole cooler.
There are also thermal pads, both reusable and single use, that perfom well and don't require any guesswork.
If you want to paste, noctua has the best paste in terms of thermal resistance, but mx4 or mx5 both perform well, as does cryorig and a bunch of others.

Possibly the next build https://w360mod.com/products/dan_a4-sfx

Very nice books written about the history of the most famous games

TL;DR playing in 4K mwahahaha