PRICE: 5.99 - OEM

As most hardcore PC enthusiasts, Modders or technicians will tell you creating stable system temperatures is a vital aspect when building a new system or over-clocking a processor. I purchased this product from NewEgg along with several other items including an ASUS motherboard, ASUS DVD BURNER (see review), AMD PROCESSOR and various other items. As always NewEgg shipped it to me lightning fast!
Thermal compound is designed to be applied conservatively between the CPU and the heat sink. Since the top of the CPU (processor) and the bottom of the heat-sink contain microscopic valleys the compound is designed to fill those valleys and thus create a consistent transferal of heat. I’m not able to give you specific temperatures your CPU should operate at because it comes down to the “core” of your specific Processor. How ever, AMD and INTEL have in depth information on all of their CPUs/CORES on their websites. Ideally lower temperatures are best, although too low can be just as dangerous as too high. An overall good range of temperature is “25-55c” for modern CPUs. (AMD claims some of their processors are stable with temperatures up to “75c”!!) Arctic Silver 5 has a some what smooth metallic consistency. After anywhere from 50-200 hours of application the substance thickens slightly but DOES NOT act as an adhesive. I applied arctic sliver to the following:

AMD 64 3000+ CPU (Processor)
AND
eVGA 6660 GT GPU (Graphic Processing Unit)

The temperatures for the “AMD 64 3000+ CPU (Processor)” prior to arctic silver application were as follows:
Idle = 34c
Load = 45c
The temperatures for the “AMD 64 3000+ CPU (Processor)” after the arctic silver application were as follows:
Idle = 29c
Load = 41c
The temperatures for the “eVGA 6660 GT GPU (Graphic Processing Unit)” prior to arctic silver application were as follows:
Idle= 49c
Load = 61c
The temperatures for the “eVGA 6660 GT GPU (Graphic Processing Unit)” after the arctic silver application were as follows:
Idle= 47c
Load = 60c
(Remember that GPU’s are a different than CPUs and are designed around operating at higher temperatures)

Overall I give Arctic Silver 5 out of 5 stars simply because it cost only around 6 bucks and lowered my CPU/GPU temperatures by a few degrees. That might not seem like a lot, but to me it’s worth the money, especially without adding any noise or special cooling.