EggXpert

I had, or thought I had a defective motherboard and removed processor
heatsink in preparation for shipping. I then had brainstorm and
reassembled the system and it worked but I had to remove thermal pad
and apply arctic silver, how does this affect 3yr Intel warranty and
Newegg 30 day return? I know what Intel says: that you need to purchase
a whole new heatsink from Intel; but its hard to swallow. Anyone have
experience like this?

A lot of people remove the pad and apply AS5 to the CPU. And no one has had a problem returning it to Intel.

thanks again tracer. good doin biz with the egg.

Not a problem. 

hmmm, better contact Intel not Newegg.. for I remeber that Newegg only has 7 days refund and 30-days replacement warranty for CPU

Technically, the use of anything other than the stock intel heatsink(no modifications such as TIM or a different fan) should result in the void of the processor's warranty.

Well Webster yes "Technically" but the pad can be removed and AS5 can be placed on the HS&F with out void of warrantee. Today most CPU manufactures look for that nice brown spot or bent pins that’s it. They know that people are going to use a third party HS&F or even thermal grease today.

If they see the stock heatsink on it, and it doesn't look like you physically damaged anything (read bent, scratched, chipped), or melted the damn thing with a bad OC job, they won't really do anything.  There are a lot of things that "void" the warranty if you do them but they don't really care about or look for too specifically.  The reason it is there is so that if you happen to actually screw up the process, they have something concrete they can point to other than generic improper use.  Even if you did replace your cooling solution, as long as any failure wasn't OC related you could likely just hang onto the stock heatsink and fan and replace it when you send it back.  "Overclocking and modifying void warranty" statements should really be read "if the problem was caused or enabled because of overclocking or modifying then its void"