Yep, I take about 3 hours to build a PC before it is ready to power-up. Heck, takes me about 3 minutes to get the thermal paste applied so I can mount the HSF on the CPU, as I am very careful about getting a precise layer of it spread across the face of the CPU.
Skuzzy,
Hardocp did a test of a few different thermal pastes, and results aside, they mentioned a very nifty product that helps with thermal paste installation. Basically it's a piece of moderately thick plastic tape with a square hole cut out of the middle. The tape is the kind where if the surface is clean to begin with, you can remove it without leaving residue and the tape can be re-used a few times, and the thickness of the tape plastic is exactly the typical recommended thickness of a layer of thermal paste.
So what you do is put the tape down on the HSF with the hole centered on where the cpu will contact the HSF, then put some thermal goop on the hsf in the hole. Then you take a very straight scraper and scrape across the plastic tape. This leaves a layer of thermal goop the exact thickness of the tape on the HSF. You then pull off the tape, and you have a perfect square of perfectly applied thermal goop on your HSF.
Very neat product/accessory. I can't remember what brand of goop it comes with but it's so neat it might be worth buying that kind of goop just to get the tape, if you can't find the right kind of tape yourself. The thickness of the tape determines the thickness of the goop layer so you could even make your own out of different tape thicknesses, to use with different types of thermal goop that might behave better with different application layer thickness.
