I just assembled a system with a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, Arctic MX-6 paste and a Noctua air cooler with one fan. It idles around 44 to 60°C, briefly spikes to about 70°C when opening a browser, and reaches around 70°C rendering a heavy project.
The room is warm and has no air conditioning. Does this sound normal, or should I take the cooler off and redo the paste?
Those numbers sound fine. Around 70°C during a render is not overheating, and a quick spike when opening an app is different from the CPU sitting at that temperature constantly.
I wouldn't pull the cooler apart just because of those readings. Try a game or another sustained workload and watch the temperature over time rather than focusing on the highest momentary spike.
Room temperature matters here. The cooler is using the air in the room, so an idle reading in a warm room isn't directly comparable with one from an air-conditioned room. Even with plenty of case fans, warmer intake air will affect the result.
The 7800X3D has an 89°C thermal limit. The processor adjusts its behavior as it approaches that limit, so a higher temperature under heavy load isn't automatically evidence of a bad paste job. Your reported 70°C render temperature is well below it.
If a sustained load pushes it to the limit and performance seems unusually low, then it's worth checking the cooler mount and airflow. That doesn't sound necessary based on these readings alone.
MX-6 being thick isn't necessarily a sign that it's expired. If you do investigate the mount later, make sure any protective film was removed from the cooler base and that the mounting screws are tightened evenly. No need to dismantle it just to check the paste consistency.
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