hi, thanks in advance for your help. I just got a intel q6600 and notice the heatsink from intel has what looks like pads that would keep heat sink from directly touching the cpu, are they supposed to be taken off before installing heatsink, I haven't seen them on a heatsink before.

Does it look like this?

http://www.vmodtech.com/spaw/images...

What are you referring to...the 3 strips of thermal material? They're supposed to be there. If you'd rather use paste, the material that's there will have to be completely removed, then a small dab of paste should be applied to the top of the CPU.

Do NOT use both!

thanks Jam, yes that is what I was talking about, I plan on overclocking the q6600 and I didn't want to have a heat transfer problem and I have always used heatsink compound for all my cpus. you thik I should take it off and use the paste?

"you thik I should take it off and use the paste?"

That's up to you. Personally, I always use the pad for the initial installation, then if I take it off for some reason, I switch to paste (you pretty much have to do that anyway). I guess it depends on how far you plan on pushing the CPU...you may wanna consider a better HSF.

Tom's Hardware recently did a 3 part article on HSF's...here's a couple of pages from part 3:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/03...

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/03...

Thanks Jam, I was thinking of getting water cooled setup but I have looked at the other heatsinks as well already and have a few choices picked out for overclocking it, just have to decide which way to go.
Thanks for you help once again Jam.

take a look here at the correct way to use thermal paste on quad or dual cpu's

http://www.overclock.net/air-coolin...

sorry here for both as it's a different way for quad than c2d ...

http://www.overclock.net/air-coolin...