The paste on mine is ceramic which is VERY cheap. My CPU is cooled by a H50 liquid cooler, so I'm pretty sure the paste is gonna do some work. I just underclocked for the meantime to 3.2ghz which goes to 62C under full load
I wished I waited 5 more minutes before posting.
I have the same setup, the H50. I first used it as intended, stock fan, with the fan acting as intake into the case. My i7 920 at stock was mid 30s, 50s under load. When I overclocked it all the way up to 3.8, the temps pretty much stayed consistently in the low 40s. But if I put the 3.8 on Prime 95 full load, my temps got pretty high, high 70s.
Then I get a pair of Noctua NF-P12s to set it up in a push/pull configuration. I also decided to test it with the fans blowing out. Unfortunately this resulted with core temps being even higher than with a single fan blowing in.
So I reversed the fans, and now they're blowing in, but I also took out some of the side fans at the same time (I have a CM Stacker 830), and now its in the low 40s on stock speed. I ordered a fan controller, so I'm waiting until that comes, and then I'm going to add 3 more exhaust fans, so I'll have 3 (technically 4) blowing in, and 4 blowing out.
I'm hoping once I'm done I'll be at 3.8 right around 40 degrees.
How did you set up the system?
Oh, and I just remembered that some of the reviewers on newegg said that it took about a week for the paste to cure, but I didn't notice any improvement after a week.
Another thing I noticed is that when you're using the radiator fan to blow in, there is no mesh or screen, and both the fan and especially the radiator were clogged with dust when I took it out. This was about after 2 months of use. I'm definitely going to put a screen to keep the dust out. It might lessen the airflow a bit, but having the radiator clogged is probably worse in the long run.