Man Vs MachineFollow

OH I know. I just know some hardware gurus who go absolutely ******* insane if you mention anything about putting more than a grain of rice of paste on your cpu, so I thought I'd be pushing your buttons with that comment.

Technically it's not an insulator, but it's less conductive than metal on metal. Metal beats paste, but paste beats air.

The real hardcore cooling nerds don't use thermal paste anymore anyways for CPU's. They use this: http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=46_58_1097&products_id=34666

Its basically a low melt point metal that literally melts and flows in between the CPU and the cooler. Installing it is scary the first time, as it involves disabling your built in motherboard CPU overtemp protection, and running your computer until the metal melts and flows correctly. I know one "special" individual that decided to ignore the instructions and not use the containment layers and ended up somehow running the metal down into his CPU socket, which rendered the motherboard very, very unhappy. But if you do it right you get a 2 degree drop in overall temperatures on the CPU block

Technically anything that insulates is an insulator. Air can be an insulator in the right circumstances.

Also works quite well as sunblock.

representative works well