short question on Thermal Grease

[Faraday815]

Ok, I'm putting a Core 2 Quad in a Gigabyte EP43-DS3L, I'm going to use the Stock Heat Sink. Since this is my first build I want to make sure of things. Do I need thermal grease for the CPU, or is it fine with the Stock Sink? Thanks

 

[-=Antimatter=-]

The stock heatsink should have a small amount of thermal grease on the bottom. If it doesn't, you need to add some.

 

[Faraday815]

Would the gray pattern there be the thermal grease?

 

[dandragonrage]

Yeah. Scraping it off and replacing with something better will improve your temps a little bit, but that stuff is fine.