I wouldnt be too fussed about which thermal paste you use, as yes they can make a difference but its actually quite small.
The more silver a paste has in it the more solid it is and thus lower thermal resistance, however the more silver thats in it the harder is it to apply a thin smooth void free layer. The way i tend to apply paste is different to most.
I will put the normal blob in the middle but then i'd use an old plastic card to spread out the paste nice and smooth on the heatspreader, then i'll put the two together and move the heatsink relative to the cpu slightly, this works out all the air bubbles and its why it becomes difficult to pull the heatsink off because i've made a good seal between the two.
It sounds to me that somthing has gone wrong with contact patch, by spinning the fan fast the mobo is trying to compensate for the high thermal resistance. I'd suspect there is a patch of the heatspreader which has no thermal goo on it.
Most pre-applied stuff these days is just that pre-applied paste which is actually really good compared to the 'thermal pads' of a few years ago which were more like sticky tape than a thermal compound and required alot of burning in. If you got the pad really hot it would form a better thermal seal, i used to do this by idleing the machine in the bios with the fan disabled letting the temps build up before shutting it off. I used to see a drop in fully loaded temps of between 5-10C by doing this.
As for the chips themselves 125w is quite high! my quad core is only 105w (note this is a maximum, worst of the worst shipped value, most are alot lower than this)
The 65w X2's are the 65nm chips which are few and far between!
And as for the amd demo, seem's there has been quite a response to our comments!
As for zing
aah the old t'bred, to small of a cpu die to consistantly remove the heat it produced, hence why they followed intel with the heatspreader route