you will definately have to take the remander of the heat pad off to apply thermal paste... but my problem is the CPU and the heatsink are glued together and everything is so tight between the MB Heatsink, I can do nothing but just pull, and I stop when the MB starts to flex. *eeeeekkkk*
I can't reach underneath to unlatch the armature on the CPU, if I could do that I could remove them as one, and then separate them. And in summation this is why I hate termal pads.