Thermal paste is a heatsink compound.... So both are the same.... Anyways, the gray coloured thermal paste available in the market is good enough to do the job for u.... Don't waste ur money to buy some fancy packaged pastes... But avoid some cheap white semi-liquid pastes which they sell as thermal paste....

formular 5 thermal paste is best 1 ask jay.mack and spartan not that cheap thou about 10 quid

using mx-4 atm wud also recomend ocz freeze

I just use aluminium oxide grease (whitestuff) I been using it for years in a v repairs industry ,that fancy named stuff works slightly better but to notice the difference youll need labtech ,so buy the whitestuff or waste your money if like fancy named sheite

sum use toothpaste

Spending money in overpriced paste is a waste... Just use a normal one... I wonder why some people are too concerned about the thermal paste... Its only used to fill the tiny air gaps between the processor and HS for conducting heat... It wont make too much of a difference if u use a normal one or a high priced.... Instead, just concentrate on your cooler type, that will make the real difference...

actually jupiter there is quite a variance in paste and end results... most cheap paste will give between 5-10 degrees higher temps than a quality pase will. quality compounds like arctiv silver 5 or 7, mx-4, tuniq x3 or x4 and zalman grease are all quality products that will drop temps by 5 or more degrees over the stock paste you get on an intel hsf or amd hsf... all cost between 5 and 7 pounds its not designed to fill air pockets ists designed to level out the surface of the cpu and hsf its

aim is to fill the micro pitting in each surface thus the need for onl a small anount and often much less than you think you need. a couple of grains of rice or the diamiter of a garden pea is the minimum and maximum you shoud be aiming to get between. any more and you will get overflow and any less you wont have enough to effectivley fill the area above the cpu... 1 thing you dont need to do is spread it just aply it as the pack it comes in recomends and most just say put a small amount on the

cpu and imediatly lock down the hsf... you only need contact directly above the cpu with good pase although some would say spread it out, it actualy has little or no actual benefit... just put it on and lock it down and when you come to remove it again you should have had a thumb print size spread... this is a successful aplication the reason say do it this way is. if you put to much on it will act as a thermal insulator instead of a pass though medium.

pastes not to bother with are akasas (any kind) pc worlds own brand (atrix) thermal right chillfactor, arctic silver matrix, rosewill rcx tc001... they will be no better than stock and often may be worse...by 1-2 degrees... recomended tuniq tx3-tx4, perlomatech Tc, AR5 AR ceramique (if you want to make the contact perminent), xigmatec PTI g3606, arctic formular 7... will all give excellent results if you can source 1 of em...,