Thermal Pads Instead of Paste?

[DrGreer]

My Corsair water cooler came with a pad of thermal stuff that I wound up having to remove and replace with paste. It was perfect though because it was spread out perfectly evenly and was a thin layer. I did some searching and there are lots of thermal pad suppliers on ebay. They say it's for ICs which seems like it might be okay for a CPU. I have an i7-6850k. Has anyone ever done this? Here are some examples...

http://www.ebay.com/bhp/cpu-thermal-pad

https://www.amazon.com/ARCTIC-Thermal-Pad-0-5-Conductivity/dp/B00UYTT3I2

 

[Eximo]

Thermal pads are generally for memory, VRMs, and other lower wattage parts. Basically to prevent air gaps that would trap heat. They are more like a gum or rubber-like material.

CPU coolers can come with pre-applied thermal paste. While it can look like a thermal pad it generally is not. If you wiped it off, then it was paste. Intel for example uses three distinct sections.