Tony92882

Luke did do a video on thermal paste application and that the only difference in temps was with too little paste anything else is fine.
 
A good amount is about the size of a grain of rice.
 
Applying too much is only bad when it gets in the socket or on the motherboard.

No 

keep it on a shelf for decorational and/or emergency purposes.

You would have to apply an abysmal amount or completely miss where the die is to have the temps shoot through the roof due to a botched thermal paste application. Or the thermal paste is crap if it creates a gap when pressure is applied.
 
Generally, as long as there's some TIM and sufficient pressure, it's going to work.
 
EDIT:
So I found a video out of curiosity to see how a part would run without TIM:
The tl;dw part is a bare cooler kept this processor running some test to 76C, vs. 58C when using thermal paste.

not enough compound would result in all cores heating up. one core heating up over other is probably due to your work load only using one or two cores.

I am currently using the air flow case, it just has the mesh in the front, thats it and you can actually buy the front itself and convert your standard one to the "air flow" model.