Thermal paste look ok here?

[TailsNZ]

Just having troubles turning on and narrowing it down. Is this how the thermal paste should look when pulled apart? It doesn't look ideal to have air holes, but I doubt that's bad enough for it to not turn on (or rather, keep rebooting before it actually loads the bios - I suspect the motherboard, tried new PSU, tried RAM etc). CPU is an Intel 4770 with standard heat sink.

Thanks for having a look!

 

[Idontcare]

Yep, looks like you had a good mount there. The "air holes" were not air holes at the time that the two surfaces were mated, they are created when you pulled it apart.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Yep its not the heatsink mount. Also the behaviour would be different, since CPUs throttle. A bad mobo sounds possible. Just make sure you tested with 1.35 or 1.5V memory and not 1.65V.