whats the best thermal paste method

Rogue Leader

It's a trap!
Moderator
drop a half a grain of rice size blob right in the middle of the processor, put the cooler on to it directly, give it a tiny little turn left and right (like 10 degrees), and secure it down. When putting it on do it in 1 perfect motion, don't pull it off or release pressure for any reason until you secure it.
 

giantbucket

Dignified
BANNED
the BEST method is to solder it together. this way you get metal-to-metal-to-metal contact, instead of metal-to-snot-to-metal contact.

another GREAT way is to wet sand the CPU and underside of heatsink to a smooth flat (or marginally convex) level, and use a grain-of-rice amount of snot.
 
Been building systems for about 15 years. I always put a dot about the size of a grain of rice in the middle of the cpu, spread it with my index finger, and attach the cooler. Not many major problems doing it that way. Plus I know I have a nice even coat on it. You only want a thin layer, too much and you can actually slowly bake your cpu to death if you just slather it on since the paste can actually work as an insulator.

Types of paste, I personally like arctic silver 5. Other guys like different ones, but that's what's worked for me, if it's not broken don't fix it:)
 
Not sure, I don't use it very much. It should be ok. If you wanted to try the arctic silver, it's not expensive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835100007

At first you may get decent temps, but the arctic silver seems to do a little better once you've run the machine and it's cured a little from the heat of the cpu. Haven't used the cooler master stuff a lot, I'm guessing it's probably ok.
 
A lot of the AMD's actually came with a silverish paste, where I remember seeing white stuff was old OEM systems like from dell, hp etc.

The trick to it is turn on your PC before you remove the old heatsink. Run it for 5-10 minutes, enough to heat up the system. After that, shut down, and remove the old heatsink. It may be warm or hot if your system is running really hot. But you turn on the pc to heat up your CPU so that it will soften the old paste that is there now. A lot of guys say use isophryl alcohol, maybe a little of that on a cloth, or even a cloth itself, just be careful and clean the old stuff off without creating much static. Apply the new paste and the new cooler and all should be happy.