Yes, use some geIL performance copper compound or even better, arctic-cooling MX-1 compound, I like it better then AS5, its not as thick. but I wouldnt have gotten that fan, even if it is a sempron(thorton) which run a little hotter than XP's(barton). I dont know if all semprons run hotter than xp's (the ones I see do, maybe it's because everyone that I know that has one has them Oc'ed) . I recomend getting a Volcano 9 next time, or a volcano 12 "extreme", but hey whats 30 bucks for a CPU fan when your proc costs way more, and you wouldnt want your proc to die because of a cheapo fan now would you?