The cooler isn't exactly top of the line, so 50C load isn't too bad. Bear in mind that as its summer you probably have a room that's a good 4-5C over what it is in winter. Ceramique works fine for me, but MX3 is also highly recommended. AS5 is pretty old school now, I wouldn't recommend due to the 200 hours curing time, and the fact there are better, easy to spread pastes out there.
Now thats what i call a response lol, I love it when you get a good few opinions, thanks everyone u'v made me feel special lol.
The cooler is a freezer 64 pro and it's not really that old, cool n quiet is off and i haven't done any overclocking at all, the bad thing i found with the ceramique as opposed to the one i was using was the spread was poor, i'm usually very neat but i felt clumsy putting that on.
If you think MX3 will do a better job then i may order a tube? Or noctua even, or both lol. With the older paste (and i can't remember what it was called for the life of me (think it was akasa something) i had it down to 35 degrees for a while and then it just raised up to 40 - 45 on idle for some reason, even though i cleaned out the case and fans / heatsinks regularly.
I hear you with the summer time heat having an impact, it really does affect it, especially during the day so maybe i'm hoping for too much from it.
I'll be getting a new cooler soon only i'm quite poor at the moment so i will need to budget too. I just wanted to get the thermal paste out of the way and then move on to other parts.
I like runnier pastes but i am willing to sacrifice anything to get a cooler cpu.
When i apply thermal paste i have used four methods, first a blob and squash the sink onto the cpu, second spread all over the cpu, third spread all over the heatsink, fourth spread a thin layer over the heat sink and a blob on the cpu (this has been my most recent attempt) the best one was the spread on cpu method but it was with my older paste and i just can't manage to spread the ceramique very well : ( Also i have a hard time getting the heatsink onto the cpu the first time, it's always awkward to seat it properly, it's like a catch and a lever system? I'm not sure if the pressure is strong enough or what.
Thanks to lasher for the link, it's very informative and has loads of info so i bookmarked it an will have a good scrutinize of it soon, Cheers for that.
I still have the stock cooler which came with my Phenom 2, would that be better than the freezer pro? (bit of a misleading name freezer innit)
Thanks for all your responses and again, i'm sorry for being a moody.
EDIT: I updated my sig so it's a little easier to see what i have : )
