I used AS5 for years as well. There are much better pastes out there now.
https://youtu.be/MmUHNZzD254
https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/guru3d- … dup-2019,1.html

Arctic Cooling MX-5 is not listed there, but having tested it against Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut, MX-5 is my choice of easy to use and cleanup and provides really good thermals as well. It also ends up being about the same price as AS5 but is a much better compound and way easier to clean up.

I never felt the need to use thermal tape/graphite pads, even though I sometimes test up to 10 - 15 CPUs during the course of a day.
Arctic MX-2 is cheap enough (and still top quality) for this type of job, and only a small drop is enough for quickly testing these old CPUs. Clean-up takes 5 seconds with IPA spray + a cotton pad. 😀

/graphite pads, even though I sometimes test up to 10 - 15 CPUs during the course of a day.

Graphene thermal pads are not very durable, even premium ones. And regular "aliexpress" kind of quality pads are just trash.

The new thermal pads work great! They are difficult to keep centered while attaching the heatsink though since they are as light as a sheet of paper and have no adhesive properties.

They fit nicely into a CompactFlash clamshell.