Installation
Now if you have done this before then you will know that sometimes applying thermal paste doesn’t always go as planned and if it’s your first time applying then make sure to follow the instructions pretty closely and you shouldn’t have any problems. The first thing I did was use my Thermal paste remover to remove the IC7 paste I had on the system before. After having it removed I used the thermal surface purifier which basically allows a better installation of the new thermal paste.
The next thing I do is put a put a few drops on the processor and then use an old plastic card to spread it out across the processor.
Then after this process is complete you can reinstall your heat sink and then fire up the system.
Testing
Now after getting the system back up and running I like to personally run the system for a few days to get a basic burn in done. I will keep my eyes out on the temps over a few days. While testing I do prime95 64bit for a few hours and also play games and anything basically that will heat up the processor.
In the first part of the testing I start up the computer while at stock settings which for my system is an Intel i5-750 at 2.67GHz. I will let it sit idle for 2 hours and leave Core temp running during the same time to see what the highs and lows are over the period of 2 hours. Then I will run Prime95 64bit for 2 hours after refreshing the temperatures in Core Temp to measure my low and high temps. I repeat these steps then overclock the system to 4Ghz. I will be using the ThermalTake FRIO CPU cooler on medium fan speeds for the testing. Below Are the Results of the Arctic Cooling MX-4 compared to the old thermal paste I had IC7 (which is made of the crushed diamonds).
As you can see there is a slight difference between the IC7 and the Arctic Cooling MX-4 of about 3c. But every degree cooler is better in the long run for your processor.