What it's all about

When mounting a heat sink on a processor, thermal pasta (aka thermal goo, coolpaste, compound,...) is necessary to fill the small gaps between both of them. There are several kinds of pastes:

Silver based:
1. Provided by Arctic Silver Inc.
AS 2
AS 3

PRO:
-they spread out good
CON:
-very hard to remove, very sticky
-they conduct electricity under pressure/high temperature

White pastes:
1. cheap, low quality compound you can get in every shop
2. Zalman thermal grease
3. Coolermaster Compound HTK-001
4. Arctic Cooling Silicone
5. Industrial compound
6. AS Céramique

PRO:
-easy to remove
-don't conduct electricity at all

Shin-Etsu compounds
Coolermaster Premium w/ Shin-Etsu

PRO:
-utter performing
CON:
-hard to get

Here's a picture of all the pastes together:



The tiny tube Zalman fabricates.


And the CM Premium compound, powered by Shin-Etsu.