Most of us buy a retail cpu when decide to upgrade and it comes with a stock CPU cooler. If you are not a PC case modder you might just decide to use the stock cpu cooler to keep your CPU cool. Well, most of stock coolers are great to keep your CPU cool for example intel core to duo E6600 and quad core Q9450 comes with very compact but low noise cooler and in my opinion stock cooler does the job for you to keep your PC processor cool.

I have tested recently the most advanced intel quad core Q9450 [every weeks new models with higher specs are coming in market] with Abit IP35 PRO XE motherboard and used stock cooler came with Intel CPU. Straight mounted the cooler in to the Motherboard as it is including pre applied thermal paste and cpu core temperature was 40 degree Celsius, room temperature was 28 degree. I know 40 degree is fine but wanted to get better cooling but how? As I said I want to keep the stock cooler which came with original intel CPU package. At this point I have decided to change the factory preapplied thermal paste and used AKASA AK-460 which is recommended by AKASA for intel processors.

Akasa AK-460 Thermal paste

This is a very good thermal paste for intel CPU and can achieve very good CPU cooling. Here the scenario is little bit different as we want to keep our stock cpu cooler which came with new CPU and don't forget we are using a Quad core CPU [I have tried this paste with stock cooler of E6600 core 2 duo and was able to get 5 degree cooler] Well, using this paste I was able to bring our quad core cpu temperature around 2 to 3 degrees and I wasn't satisfied so I have used AK-TC 5022 which is recommended for AMD CPU cooler and CPU temperature dropped 40 to 29 to 31 degree! I am not going to talk about ingredients or how it happened but I am happy with my cooling using stock cooler which low profile and low noise as well.

Akasa AK-TC 5022 thermal paste

You can use different thermal paste but for some of us its obvious to consider AKASA thermal paste and if deciding AKASA thermal paste then AK-TC 5022 did the trick for my intel quad core.

Well, I myself never manage to spread the thermal paste as instructed in manual or by other PC gurus and I just did put one little drop [1/4th size of a green peas of AK-TC 5022] in the middle of CPU and mounted the stock cooler and it worked for me.

So, lets get clear here I am not comparing the AK-460 with AK-TC 5022 as these are recommended one for Intel and other for AMD. All I wanted show and share how I achieved better cooling using a stock cooler but using a different thermal paste and its totally my personal experience.

Good luck with better PC cooling.