Use a generous amount of thermal paste (ignore the rice grain method)

I use a thin X pattern to get even coverage.

We like to spread it

I spread the same thickness correctly on the whole surface. The rice grain method is a not advisable.

Spread it

A little too generous here, but yes, best technique

The point is to have the thinnest layer possible, the surface roughness of the 2 parts limits the surface area of contact. If you had 2 perfectly flat surfaces & no paste that would be best.

We use "X" patterns on our server CPUs

Thanks David, we would add a little more but that's just us

I spread it like Nutella on toast, very generous.

The paste I use is so oily yet a diamond in the rough. Keeping my i7 6700K and 1080Ti FE going strong.