Weird that you mention trying without thermal pads. i did this at 9.30 this morning and just finished my testing. However, last night i went back to the stock air cooler (for testing) which gave me the same gpu temp but 5c lower hotspot. This morning i went back to my block and tried without the vram pads and i got much better spread. I very quickly tested with furmark and kept a very close eye on the vram temps. thankfully the vram temps only hit 82c but the gpu hit 51.3c and hotspot 60.8c. 26.5c ambient room 0.5c lower than last night and 36.9c water temp 3.5c up from last night. A ten 10c drop in temps with the increased water temps proves i have the incorrect vram thermal pads. I disassembled the block put the pads back on and temps went back to the same as before the pads were removed. Now alphacool got back to me and asked for pics of the pad imprints and paste spread/contact and stupid me forgot to take a few pics and i really CBA to take it apart for the 7th time. i just hope alphacool send out the correct size pads which from my research is incorrectly 1mm and others have had 0.75mm vram thermal pads sent out to them after they to found out the same temps issues was caused by the incorrect vram pads.