fjaesbog said:
Arctic Silver 5, is definitely something i recommend. Decreased my old system, 3.7ghz 4100 AMD OC'ed
to 4.5ghz by 10 in idle temps. Yes, by 10. But that's just me.
It's unlikely that a temperature drop of that magnitude would happen just by changing the thermal paste. I'm not saying it didn't happen, just that it's more likely that some other factor was involved. This is an exceptional situation and it would be more realistic to expect, at most, 1 or 2 degrees difference from using a higher quality thermal paste.
Anyway, my opinion on the topic is that it's not worth spending a lot of money since the benefit (only a few degrees) is minimal. Get an inexpensive, reputable compound like Arctic Silver 5 or MX-2 and spend the savings on a better CPU cooler.
Hope that helps.