Scratch on brand new i5

i recently bought an i5 4670k, brand new from newegg and when i received it i found a slight knick on the heat spreader. 

it seems to me like it was from a knife or something maybe a razor blade. it's extremely small and on the outer edge of the cpu. i was just wondering if this will have any effect on its performance. i know i probably shouldnt be worried about it however this is my first pc build and i don't want anything to go wrong. 

i'm almost absolutely sure that i'm overreacting but i have no idea ow fragile a cpu is so I want to be certain.
 
I don't think a cpu should come like that anyway.
Thank-you!
 
 

Personally, I'd send it back.

Ever heard of delidding? That metalic heat spreader will have no affect on the cpu's performance. People even intentionally scrath them all to hell to get better contect between it and their cpu cooler. My point is, it should be fine. Throw it in a rig and if it works perfectly fine, then great. Having to pay for shipping and wait for the RMA process just isn't worth getting rid of a cosmetic nick.

thats exacly what i was thinking. i don't want to wait 2-3 weeks lol. i took it out of the plastic and looked at it from the side and literally it is so small that i cant even see if it went in deep or not. i can only see the scratch from the top. i just wanted to make sure that there would be no problems with performance. and it's at the top corner so it's no where near the actual cpu  

"People even intentionally scrath them all to hell to get better contect between it and their cpu cooler" please could you tell me more about this, as I'm only aware of people doing the exact reverse, by lapping the CPU and Heatsink to a smoother finish for better contact? 

Lapping is usually done to the copper base of a heatsink because copper reacts with the air and humidity causing it to oxidise. Oxidised copper is not very good at transfering heat.

just looked it up. it's called lapping. they sand down the cpu and their heatsink and it makes everything have more contact. 

And to remove the nickel plating on the CPUs IHS down to the far more conductive copper, as Nickel has a thermal conductivity of 91 W/(mK)where as copper is 401 W/(mK).........its the deliberate scratching technique i'm a little confused by. 

"scratching" and lapping are the same thing

I could very well be wrong on that one :P Don't take me as an authority. The point is, however, that the cpu should be completely fine.

Scratching them can make the IHS thinner therefor allowing it to transfer heat more effectively. Just have to make sure to polish it afterwards otherwise it may be worse.