Repaste question.

[Ragnaraz]

I have noticed that some heatsinks have a weird thermal pad attached to them where they mount to chips.
After having my laptop messed with by a supposed "pro" I ended up having to do it myself since he ****** up 3 times.
I got a new heatsink and it had those pads on it, when I checked mine there was no pads they had been removed. I mean that creates a bigger gap so there's less mounting force but I want to know if you would just clean and repaste over those pads or do you actually remove them?

In my case I was forced to shim my heatsink to get a proper mount which is not ideal but I have no option aside trying to solder the shims and I have no metal clamps for that atm.

 

[Teknobry]

You can buy thermal pads, although if you're not sure what thickness to use then it can be a bit of a headache.
I recently re-did the thermal paste on my processor and noticed that on the vram and other chips the thermal pads were in a right state.
Rather than faff about cutting new pads to try fit I gave k5-pro a try. It's like a thick thermal paste (not to be used on processor though) that can be used in place of thermal pads up to around 2mm in thickness.

Temps so far are good and it was a lot quicker and easier to use.