So I joined the club.
It was MUCH easier than I though. I was also fairly surprised the razor cut into the black stuff like through butter. Except for one corner, I barely needed any force at all.
Getting the stuff off took a little longer, but the razor did the job pretty well. I manned up and used it on the PCB as well
Rest was taken care of with some cloth rubbing and nail scraping.
Applying the Liquid Ultra was pretty interesting, the stuff is pretty solid in consistence, and yet spreads like water. Funny.
Putting the IHS back took a few attemps, but I guess I managed to seat it back in place fairly well. It was freely rotating on the die btw, and I could clearly see significant gap between it and the PCB. The IHS is also somewhat concave it seems, which might be responsible for uneven temperatures even after the delid process.
Well, long story short:
YAY! I am very happy about the result, even though I am not particular fond of one of the cores being significantly hotter than others - but there's no way in hell I'd take the cooler off and go through the hell of reapplying NT-H1 again.
Oh btw,these temperatures are with 1.140V vcore. Not exactly awesome, but the heatsink is a little bit warmer than before.
I guess I will eventually buy different cooler (and lap the IHS too), because as much as I like the Hyper 212 EVO, the retention bracket sucks donkey balls. There's probably not enough force to hold the heatsink in place, and the pressure comes from basically just one small central spot, which I don't believe helps either. Bigger surface for the bracket please!!
Needless to say, the cooler is absolutely awesome for its cost, though.