edit 09/16/2006 - picked up the ThermalTake Sonic Tower. Nice passive heatpipe cooler. But the all mighty Conroe is just too much for it. With it completely passive, at full load, temperatures slowly, but surely raised to the same temps as my earlier no thermal paste test. It took like 10 minutes to rise to the throttle temp of 85C. Too bad, it's a nice looking heatsink. At least the rest of my purchase I'm still keeping - $50 Plextor SATA burner and $10 160GB SATA HD 
I removed the stock HSF from my E6400 to apply AS5. Cleaned off the thermal pad and decided to run it without any paste between the CPU IHS and HSF. Full load temps reached 85C as reported by Core Temp and 83 as reported by Intel Thermal Analysis Tool and 65C from SpeedFan. The CPU ran fine without any problems at that temperature. So stop worrying about high idle temps. Conroe can run just as hot as Prescott. Why Intel listed a max temp in the low 60s, who knows.
And now with AS5 applied, load temps are 69C. Need to see if the temp drops after the breakin period for AS5. And note, my stock thermal pad temps at full load was 72C and idled at 39C before. And if I used the throttle option in Intel TAT, idle temps dropped to 33C. Ambient temp is 25C.
edit - screenshot
Yeah, the CPU throttled back because of the high temps. And why would the HSF be hot? There's nothing between the IHS and HSF to transfer the heat?????? I'm tempted to run it without the HSF installed
another edit - removed the HSF and the copper core was not hot at all. The IHS, was warm to touch though.
I removed the stock HSF from my E6400 to apply AS5. Cleaned off the thermal pad and decided to run it without any paste between the CPU IHS and HSF. Full load temps reached 85C as reported by Core Temp and 83 as reported by Intel Thermal Analysis Tool and 65C from SpeedFan. The CPU ran fine without any problems at that temperature. So stop worrying about high idle temps. Conroe can run just as hot as Prescott. Why Intel listed a max temp in the low 60s, who knows.
And now with AS5 applied, load temps are 69C. Need to see if the temp drops after the breakin period for AS5. And note, my stock thermal pad temps at full load was 72C and idled at 39C before. And if I used the throttle option in Intel TAT, idle temps dropped to 33C. Ambient temp is 25C.
edit - screenshot
Yeah, the CPU throttled back because of the high temps. And why would the HSF be hot? There's nothing between the IHS and HSF to transfer the heat?????? I'm tempted to run it without the HSF installed
another edit - removed the HSF and the copper core was not hot at all. The IHS, was warm to touch though.