building my first computer, thermal paste question

I'm building my first computer, and I have never installed a CPU before, the manual said i would need thermal paste so i added a drop to the center to smash it down with the heat sink. I didn't think much of it at the time but i believe there may have been a thermal pad already on the heat sink, is it ok to leave it this way with both paste and pad, or should i clean it all off and just apply paste.

 

Yes it should be ok but to be sure run a stress program such as prime 95 or intel burn available at majorgeeks and monitor your temperatures to see how hot your cpu gets with speedfan or realtemp,I do this every time I install a cpu to make sure it's installed correctly.

It's definitely not ideal but if your aiming for just working and not maximum cooling performance you may be ok.

What kind/brand of thermal paste is it? If it's basic white silicon I'd be tempted to try and remove the heatsink and clean it all off the heatpad then reinstall,if the heatsink is already stuck down to the cpu which happens after it's been heated then you have a good physical connection with the heat spreader, in that case I'd leave it as long as your load/stress temperatures aren't too high.