Opteron144 thermal tape

[dawgtuff]

Just bought this retail Opteron and found the HS had grey "thermal tape" on it. An AMD tech paper stated that "thermal paste" is recommended for Opterons(go figure!). What is best for this CPU?And is this HS/Fan any good?

 

[emilyek]

The stock cooler is fine if you get a chip that doesn't require lots of volts to overclock well, which is likely with an opteron.

If it were me, I'd test it out first, and see if the temps were anything to get worried about (50+ under 100% load) before I bought some arctic silver 5 and a nice cooler.

 

[dawgtuff]

Isn't Arctic silver conductive?If so, AMD doesn't recommend it.I am going to OC and since the price of watercooling has come down, could you recommend a good unit for around $50?