Most thermal pastes are about equal in effectiveness so stick with any name brand and you should be good.

For application I typically clean both the CPU’s heatspreader and cooler contact point with alcohol then squeeze out about a small pea sized amount of paste on the center of the heatspreader then let the mount force of the cooler spread it.

First of all this isn’t accurate. Second, you have no idea what op uses. Third, who simps for Windows?

The same reason people brag about working 80 hour weeks.