Quote Originally Posted by fishstix View Post
I have the same CPU and also using stock heatsink/fan, but I use Arctic5 silver compound stuff. Also after reviewing different methods of applying paste, I used the single line down the middle method I believe. I previously spread it all over and used a credit card to smooth/scrape off excess, but that was too much and supposedly leaves air pockets. As a reference, I idle around 36C, 43ish dualboxing

Also about overclocking, it's fun to push stuff to the limit, but sometimes you don't even see the difference in performance unless you run a benchmark test or count the fps numbers from games. I used to OC mine to 3.4ghz I think, just for fun, but once winter ended... my PC started overheating to the point of it crashing.
I might re-apply ~ I had a hard time snapping the heat sink into place for some reason on this setup ~ Wondering if I might have moved it around so much that I lost some paste/or have to much in one spot~