If you are worried the pins are shorted from the paste clean the socket.
You could use a can of contact cleaner and spray it out good. This would not be my first choice though. I have found that contact cleaners will destroy some plastics. It seems to be mostly the molded termalpastic type stuff - it crumbles. Some other plastics get kind of gooey.
My first choice would be to remove everything from the MB, including the battery, spray it down with a good cleaner - 409, Fantastic, even a laundry pre-spray as in Shout. Let it soak a bit and then rinse in the sink. You can also wash the CPU if you feel the need.
Now, LET IT DRY WELL ! After it drip dries, face down or on edge, for several hours take some canned air to all the sockets and blow out well. Don't forget to blow out around the BIOS chip and battery socket. Don't use the canned air right away. It is cold out of the can and will freeze the water on the board not dry it. The canned air is used mostly to displace the water so it will air-dry better.
Put the board somewhere warm, go have a beer and something to eat. Get a good nights sleep. When you wake up your nice squeaky-clean motherboard should be ready to go back in.
For it is not what is seen, but what is not seen.