Heatsinks - Anyone else had problems?

[Lonyo]

I cleaned it off with white spirit, then alcohol, which seemed to do the trick, and it's not cooling my CPU nicely, but for a supposedly good cooler company, this seems like a VERY bad thing to do.
It was basically like having sticky tape across the whole base of the heatsink (the bit which is meant to have a perfect surface) so it ended up with glue-gunk all over it, which wouldn't have been a good idea to slap onto a CPU.
I remember my Volcano 7 and stock AMD coolers both had wax stuff on the bottom which I scraped off to use AS5, but they also have a small piece of plastic/film on top of that to protect it, but no sticky glue, which was fine.

Is it standard for heatsinks with non-preapplied TIM to have an actual sticky thing protecting the base which leaves residue, or was this just in error?

 

[RalfHutter]

The protective plastic sheet is standard for Thermalright, and to a certain extent, a good idea. It helps keep the base from getting damaged in transit.

It is a bit of a pain to clean off the remaining glue residue, but I've found a pretty decent method of doing it. To get the residue itself off, I use that stuff called "Goo Gone", and to clean off the citrusy/oily residue left by the Goo Gone I use Acetone, followed by a bit of 91% isopropyl alcohol. The Goo Gone is super-effective for cleaning up the rubbery glue left by stickers and labels. You can buy it at drug stores, supermarkets and places like Target/Walmart.