I don't really care too much about anything besides the TIM and the overclocking on lower models. AMD's stock coolers look good but when tested they have proven to be pretty rubbish really and beaten by $25 alternatives.
The fact you can delid pretty much any CPU since Skylake and cut enormous load temperatures off it without fail doesn't reflect well. I had a 6700K that would do 4.7GHz and run at 80 degrees celsius on my cooling, then you delid it and it'll do 4.8GHz and run at 65.
The second thing is back in the days especially Core 2, overclocking was the nuts. You could take an $80 CPU and make it as fast as a $300 one albeit sacrificing heat and power. It lost on some apps because of the lack of cache, on others it hardly mattered. The difference was of course, you could then take the $300 CPU and make it run beyond that as well. So there was still value in the higher end models for enthusiasts.
Everyone else though had a lot of fun with the E21xx and E4xxx series.
