thermal paste and Intel boxed CPU

I just got my boxed Intel P4 2.4GhzB CPU. It comes with it's own fan and heat sink. There is a black square on the bottem of the heatsink where it will come in contact with the processor. Is this black square adequate or do I need to buy and apply some sort of thermal conductive paste? If so, how do I do so?

Use the thermal interface that is pre applied to your heat sink.
If you remove the heatsink in the future remove the black thermal compound with rubbing alcohol and a cotton cloth from the heatsink and the heat spreader on the cpu. When you reinstall the heat sink spread a thin layer of thermal grease on the cpu heat spreader.
Do not lap the stock heatsink. It has a two layer thermal interface. One layer is the black thermal compound the other is a soft aluminum tape that conforms to the shape of the heat spreader on the cpu.
Also the heatsink supplied with boxed cpu's is designed to apply a fixed amount of force to the cpu. By removing both layers of the thermal interface and lapping the aluminum core of the heatsink too much material may be removed from the heatsink reducing the force applied to cpu. This may cause cpu temperature to increase.

<font color=red><i>Doctor Hooter</i></font color=red> <A HREF="http://www.page3.com/" target="_new"><b>(·Y·)</b></A>

That NE guy just want's you to ruin your warranty. The black thermal pad is great, nearly as good as the best paste, and using it will preserve your 3-year factory warranty.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>