From my "CPU Thermal Pasting" days, I thought the whole idea was to use the stuff VERY sparingly, even more so than the very small "new blobs" shown. In the CPU days it almost seemed like an art form to get the amount "just right", certainly nothing like what was done at the factory.
That is right. I used to work at IT shops for years and this was treated very critical! No noobs allowed.
But I have seen Noobs smear the entire tubes onto the processors and there was no issue with these PC's for years. Just viruses.
So I kind of got paralysed to this "extreme" application and jsut put a blob that wont go allover the place like on these Ants, I mean these Ants are mental, I dont think I ever seen anything like THIS before. Even the wors noob application didnt go allover the motherboard it was just like oozing out from under the heatsink.
Cleaning this stuff is the worst. If you look at my img where I cleaned it you can still see all the past inbetween the tiny 0.125 pitched pins. There is no way to get that out without intesive brushing wiht tooth brush, like the other poster did. I didnt go that far because it seems like that may have been a bit TOO much.