It is possible that it is 'snake oil', but it is also possible that thin-film materials exhibit unusual properties. It is my understanding that the conduction effects take place between gold and gold - not the base metal. Base metal is electroplated with gold, so that contact is chemical.
As I imagine - if you look at any surface with high enough magnification you will see something like a Grand Canyon. Only the tips of the mountains touch when two surfaces connect.
The film fills the valleys and supposedly increase conduction and prevents age effects.
I don't know. Weird stuff happens in thin films.
Anyway, I gave it a try. When I opened the CPU to do the assembly, I believe that I got a refurbished part.
The stock heat sink had no thermal compound, it looked scratched, and the CPU had some discoloration on some pads.
I cleaned the CPU pads with denatured alcohol and lint-free swabs and applied the DeoxIT.
I don't know if anything unusual will happen - the system boots, I've installed Windows 7 and I'm re-installing my apps. No errors, most I/O ports seem to work fine. I have not tested every one yet, but each class of ports (SATA 3 and 2, USB 3 and 2, Firewire, eSATA, etc.) works fine.
So far everything looks good. It runs fine at 'Optimized' settings and comes up running at 3.8 GHz with no heat issues. The heat sink doesn't even get warm.
I have not yet started overclocking, I'll report anything unusual after I finish installing my stuff.
If I hadn't seen those marks, I would not have done it, but I have yet to see any problems using DeoxIT.
No way to prove it does anything, except it seems to do no harm.
By the way, this is a core i7-2600k, mb is asus p8p67 pro, Ripjaws X 16 GB ram. I'm using a simple Silent 1156 cooler (for now anyway) in a HAF932 case.