thermal grease...

should you still use something like artic silver when u get a chip with the stock heatsink? would it come with some sort of thermal grease already? o.0...

im gonna get the retail xp3200+ barton and need to know if i should still buy some artic silver...

If you're not going to o/c your cpu, then the regular goop that comes w/ the hsf will do, but using AS5 of AS3 will lower your temps by 3-5c.

is 3-5c that big of a difference? o.0

its not nessesary to use AS5 for stock heatsink and processors, but it doesnt hurt either, it will keep your temps down a few C, which is good for processor life

and how long is a processor life without it? xD

Sorry, but although true, I am not really a beleiver of that procsessor life thing. Sure it is true, but running a few °C warmer will what? Degrade the life from 10 years to 8 maybe? By that time your CPU will probably be sitting among a pile of junk somewhere.

Getting good thermal grease depends on things such as the flatness of the heatsink, etc. I upgraded from the white stuff that came with my heatsink to OCZ Ultra II and I get a 4°C drop on the CPU core. And that was not even top of the line. In terms of temps, it competes with AS3 and AS Ceramique despite the fact that it turned out to not have any silver at all.

Just for the info, the stock AMD heatsink comes with a thermal pad. I recomend you scrape that off, clean the heatsink, lap it completely flat and then to 1000 grit and apply a silver thermal grease such as AS5 or OCZ Ultra 5+. That will yeild the best results. If you have any specific questions on lapping, please do not hesitate to PM or AIM me on lapping!

Good Luck!
-0cer

blah..im much to lazy to lap... im not going to overclock or anything

use the cheapest grease you can find then. it wont matter much, few degrees on a normal computer without OCing.

BLOB, if you're gonna buy a retail CPU and not overclock it then dont bother use AS5. You will lose warranty from AMD if you use AS5.

The stock HSF has a thermal pad underneath, just slap it in and done.