Paste or Pad?

[Roadkill]

Which is better in the long run, thermal paste or thermal pads?

[Ribbitski]

Thermal paste is much better than thermal pads. I took the thermal pad off of the bottom of my stock AMD heatsink and started using generic silicon heat sink compound and saw a 10 degree Celcius drop in proc temps. If I had started using a name brand metallic compound (like arctic silver (http://www.arcticsilver.com/) ) I probably would have seen an even greater drop.

Ribb

[keith]

I always use paste. I recently got Artic silver 3 and it is great.And one of their containers could lat a lifetime.

[Mntsnow]

I personally prefer to use a quality paste. while it's not a easy to deal with, I consider that a small price to pay...compaired to the benifits

[Roadkill]

Great, thanks for your input folks.

[Codes]

Definitely Arctic Silver 3, there is nothing else..

[NDC]

Paste for me...