I think it doesn't matter what type of thermal goop you apply to the cpu. I have two friends in which their systems were almost completely identical (same tower, same mb, samce cpu, same hd, same hsf, different video cards.) We were curious on the topic of which goop did better so on one we applied arctic alumina (white goop) and on the other we applied AS3. We ran prime95 for bout ten hours and read the temps (pcalert3 and mbm5) and they were very similar. I think they would both run at 40-41C full load. It made no difference. My other friend however got mad because he spent like five bucks more for the AS3. But yah, according to my reference, it makes no difference.