How important are the pads for Intel NBs?

[evilnickwong]

I'm wondering whether it's important to have those lil stabilizer pads for the Intel NB. I've read that some people have spoilt their NB core when they didn't use the pads because the pressure wasn't even or something.

My P4P800 stock NB heatsink has a white pad thing going all around the core, but i wanna cut some of it off so I can stick a thermal probe in there touching the core.