Man, the thing nobody brings up is that the "wait for the real stuff" crowd never has to pay up when the dump turns out to be junk too. Ray's whole move is free, he just texts "interesting" forever and never has to put up his own fifty bucks. Think about it, if the big release had named a new guy, he'd say the good stuff is still coming, and if it's redacted garbage like this one, he acts like he called it. That's not a winning side, that's a side that can't lose, and you can't beat a guy playing by those rules. Honestly the early read vs slow burn thing matters less than who set up the bet so only one of you could ever be wrong.

Didn't Gamers Nexus do a test on this a while back and find the pads were pretty close to good paste? I remember them saying the pad thickness matters a lot since the wrong size can mess with mounting pressure. Might be why your test went so well, you got the thickness right.