I have not tried to re-apply thermal paste. I came here to figure out the first steps I should be taking. Is thermal paste the first one? The cooler came with thermal paste applied.

This cooler did not come with a tension mount.

I have been using the stock AMD cooler on my Ryzen 1700 and it performs like crap, sometimes getting up too 95C+. After talking to my friend who has the 7700 who has temps of 85C+ on the stock cooler and switched to the D15(dropping his full load temps by 20C+/-) i decided i wanted to have better cooling. Also, I live in the PNW and don’t have air conditioning, which isn’t needed really where i live but i don’t need my computer heating my room to 80 degrees in the summer and want it to cool as well as it can, especially with that power hungry/hot GPU.