in following the installation instructions at http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silv ... ctions.htm i've become concerned about step 10 which says (amoung other things) "Minimize any "twisting" or lateral "sliding" in either plane in an attempt to mate the "peaks" of the surfaces together. When you twist or slide one surface against the other, "peaks" on one or both surfaces will travel over areas where two "valleys" should come to rest. The peaks will scrape away compound that is needed to fill the void between the valleys that will oppose each other when the surfaces are in their final position and cause small voids (air gaps). ANY air gap will significantly increase thermal resistance in an otherwise GOOD interface."

here's my concern: arctic silver 3 is supposed to work on a microscopic level right? it fills in the microscopic gaps and irregularaties blah blah blah. how are we expected to place the heat sink on the *exact* spot when we set it down!? w/ artic silver 3 working on a microscopic level we can't even move the heat sink any distance appreciable to a microscope (or the microscopic peaks will start scraping), let alone the naked eye.

thoughts? hopefully comforting thoughts . . . (eg - "stop being so paranoid, it doesn't matter!")

In my (highly uneducated) opinion this sounds about right to me. Obviously you don't want to move the thing several inches while installing, but you need to move it minimally usually.

I've installed several CPUs with Arctic Silver, and I've found the best you can do is eye ball it as close as possible from the top while placing the heatsink on, then let the clip move it to the proper position. With the proper "eye balling" this could result in no movement of the heatsink in relation to the chip, but that is unlikely.

You weren't supposed to move it around? Oops, I did that. Seems to work fine anyway...
I moved it around in 5-8mm circles to get it flat, thin and even.

I think it might matter if you have really uneven surfaces, then you'll scrape away the compound from where you want it. But I can't imagine anyone that has a such uneven heatsink and yet gets Silver III?

I don't think it matters too much either. But make sure your CPU is clean, and the heatsink is too. It helps a lot (I redid mine after doing it incorrectly the first time, and temps dropped a good 8 degrees F, or about 4 degrees C).

I agree. The first time I started using thermal paste (AS3), I was especially paranoid that I needed to do everything textbook-perfectly to achieve desired results. Needless to say, each subsequent time I was a little less careful, but the results were always the same.