I... uhhhh... "accidentally" squeezed too much thermal compound onto the cpu, and like a noob panicked and removed the cpu, while wiping the excess off I dropped it """<(@_@)>"""" luckily it was on the rug. so I now had thermal paste on the threads, my hands, the motherboard and the rug- luckily threads did not get bent. I took some qtips and isopropyl alcohol, and very careful and painstakingly dabbed the compound off of the threads and the mobo. and cleaned the whole cpu of the thermal compound and reinstalled with the less is more mentality... Its my first time don't judge... As for the stock heat sink- I'm replacing it with a liquid cooling system that's due to arrive some time in October, coming all the way from Germany. Not sure If I can change the RGB, but im just replacing it so it doesn't really matter to me.

Naw fair. I was asking about the heatsink for a friend. A 3rd party has one they aren't using and it would be an upgrade for my buddy so. No judgement. Usually those things come with goop pre applied. Going with a 3rd party compound is the "enthusiast" move.

So that's the shit that came on it in a nice clean patch, man I fuvked that up... well live and learn.

Whatever, if anybody gives you guff about it just tell 'em the factory compound is trash and not all T.I.M. is created equal 😅 (For the record there are different formulations. But I'm not sure how one compares to the next. The line above is what [i]I[/i] was instructed to say about my own application lol)