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I have the latest Raspberry Pi 4 (8gb edition), I'm using my Pi as a server to host a website, and to host a Discord bot that is being used in more than ~800 servers right now.

I overclocked my Pi, and I noticed that it was getting hot in the official casing of Pi 4, so I decided to get ICE Tower CPU Cooling Fan by 52Pi, which helped much to reduce the thermal issues. With the fan, the temperature of my Pi is usually ~40℃ (104°F).

ICE Tower CPU Cooling Fan by 52Pi.

The ICE Tower did come with thermal pads/stickers. Since I also have thermal paste at home, I was wondering if using thermal paste before applying the thermal sticker would help to reduce the temperature even more?

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    Best way to find out is to test it. You know the temperatures when it's not applied, so apply it and measure again ;)
    – Swedgin
    Commented Jun 4, 2020 at 11:36

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Your question should be "Which material has a lower thermal resistance: thermal paste, or thermal pads"? The material with the lower thermal resistance will keep the temperature of your components coolest for any given heat sink.

To find the answer to your question, we should do an Internet search. This search yields a link that contains the answer to your question.

According to the people at arctic, the thermal paste "out-performs" thermal pads - meaning their thermal resistance is lower. So yes - thermal paste should help reduce the temperature of your RPi.

You could confirm this by tracking your CPU/GPU temperature using both methods (paste and pads) over a period of time while running a benchmark stress test.

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