chipset cooling pads/ paste/ tape

If it comes with a pad, odds are paste or tape won't work. Pads are thick, the others are not.
Trying to use paste or tape instead of pads with the stock heatsink (whatever it is) will generally (but not always) cause overheating and blammo.

Hmm, but the shim seemed on level with the z77 chip. Why wouldn't tpaste work?

You certainly seem to be right about the "blammo", you are making me get that heatsink off again and double check it just to have my peace of mind back.

As long as the stuff that was there was super super thin, like the TIM that comes on Intel chipsets that I've seen, TIM will work fine.

The stock chipset TIM is often an applied-like-tape TIM that melts when it gets warm.

Ok lesson learned, I shouldn't have bothered... no gain and no point.
BTW the stuff I removed wasn't super thin, not too thick ether. I'd say regular chipset sticky goo, just a bit thinner than on LGA775 generation boards.

I just double checked it, the shim is very soft sponge-like and level with the z77. It won't interfere with the chip-heatsink contact. But a thicker shim on other boards might make for too big of a gap for good contact.