Having never used one of these direct heat pipe coolers before am I right in thinking they have a prefered mounting direction? I.e. if you have to go to the trouble of adding your line of TIM so that it is in line with the cores, do you also have to line the heat pipes in the same direction, to maximise heat pipe contact?
I know there was a thread on here ages ago regarding what one of the Dons considered to be the correct way to apply TIM to these types of coolers, I think it was based around a preoverlocked build they were doing and they were getting some people having problems after they'd removed the cooler for whatever reason. Anyway, the amount the officially reccomended was WAY more than a line, it was virtually a full plastering job, I would say half a tubes worth. It actually looked ridiculous but that was the amount they reccomended using. Certainly wasn't a pea or a line. If it was me though I would first apply some to the cooler and use a credit card to wipe off in order to fill in any gaps between the heat pipes and the aluminium. Then I would use the line method on the cpu.