don't use all of the tube 2 cover the entire top. just d size of a cooked rice grain would do. spread it out reaally thinly with a card or sumthin. the paste would have d opposite effect if u put 2 much.
go to www.arcticsilver.com and depending on what kind of silver you got (in this case 5) and the kind of CPU you got..it'll give you proper instructions for spreading it on. You don't want it to get onto connectors because it is semi-conductive..and will short out your mobo and/or CPU
well intels run cooler than AMD's as it is, but 19 idle is pretty good....can definitely tell its stock cooling cause your temps go up quite a bit on load.....
do i realy need compound i get 19c at idle and 31c when i play games with two case fans.
for the record...you already HAVE compound dude...what do you think is between your heatsink and CPU core? If it doesn't have compound it has whats called a thermal pad....if you took off the thermal pad or existing grease you got on there now and replaced it with arctic silver 5 you'd get lower temps but only by like 2 or 3 degrees...not worth it in your case
So you removed your heatsink and checked? Because thats BS...there isn't a heatsink out there that is put ontop of a CPU that doesn't have either a thermal pad or compound...I think you got your stuff confused here david. You won't ever find a heatsink without something between the heatsink and core...that is just absurd..