My Thermalright PA120 V3 is causing single-core overheating and FPS drops in Dead Space Remake. How do I fix this?

While rendering those creepy ship interiors, I noticed a weird temperature spread—the delta between the hottest and coldest core was a massive 16℃. It felt like the CPU was struggling for its life. It turned out the PA120 V3 base wasn't sitting flush, causing a local heat soak. I tried ramping up the fans, but the hot core stayed stuck at 90-94℃, which was unacceptable. I tore the cooler off and carefully re-tightened the screws in a cross pattern, bringing the delta down to 7-10℃. Even then, it wasn't quite right until I swapped to a high-conductivity paste and applied more pressure, finally dropping the peak to 76-82℃. Core temps now sit at 62-68℃ with fans at 1400 RPM. After three rounds of Prime95, there's zero throttling and frame times are steady at 8.2-11.5ms.