Thermal paste migration after 3 years made me eat my words

I opened up a client's gaming rig last week that was running 15 degrees hotter than when I built it for him back in 2021. The paste had basically migrated off the center of the IHS and pooled around the edges, looked like a greasy donut. I used to check spread every time I reseated a cooler but somewhere along the way I stopped bothering, figured quality paste and proper mounting pressure was enough. Took me 8 years in this trade to realize that a 5 dollar tube of MX-4 applied with the X method versus a pea dot can make a 10 degree difference on some Ryzen chips. Has anyone else seen weird pump-out patterns on specific CPU sockets, or am I just unlucky with the ones I work on?