Purchased a Scythe Infinity for my Q6600 because the standard cooler has these plastic pins which have to be pressed inside the mobo and I not really like the way it's mounted, looks abit weak.

So I found this website, but he talks about "The liquid metal TIM", but its not clear to me? What kind of stuff is TIM? Do I need to apply the cooler pasta afterwards, or will using TIM be enough? Could TIM cause damage the CPU and does it needs to be cleaned/re-applied after some months?