Heat Sync Question

CPU's do not come with pre-pasted heatspreaders.

The FP7 is a fine basic heat-pipe cooler.

Just because you won't use a cooler on a quad core doesn't mean everyone else should be so silly...

Yes, it really depends on how extreme the OP's overclocking plans are. If he's only doing moderate OCing, even the stock Intel cooler should work fine and both CPU and cooler should last until he's ready to get a different CPU.

If it doesn't make a difference *during your use* of the CPU, it's a waste of money.

You misunderstood: both the OP and beurling are talking about CPUs, which do NOT come with thermal compound pre-applied to them.

Yes, as the OP noted, the stock Intel coolers do come prepasted.

No

It depends on the specific cooler.

freezer pro and stock intel copper cooler are about the same

you get 57c give or take a few c with both coolers with the average c2d clocked around 3.4ghz
with artic 90mm fan or stock copper core intel cooler running 2200+ rpm

you should not use an atic cooler with a quad core you want to overclock it will not work good.
the artic cooler is ok for dual core cpu's - they look like they should cool great they look like a copy of thermalright, but they do not.

zalman 9700 or 9500
thermal right ultra 120 or even 90 but its not that much better then artic

i have one buy i have not tested it, the zerotherm - it got a high rating its sililar to ones above

ninja mini is not bad

the giant towers are too top heavy i would stay away

check out frostytech.com, they have reviews of many coolers. a friend has the one xigmatek thats at the top of their list and it seems very effective. im thinking about picking one up myself.