Thermal pads or paste?

[Tomcat825]

My GTX 280's thermal pads are completely worn away so I'm going to replace them, however I stumbled across a post from google that stated the general consensus is that Paste is far better on GPU's (core AND memory) than pads, but paste is risky as it's capacititive (not sure what this is tbh).

Source: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=133823

What would you guys suggest? I'm happy to risk the paste if it's just a case of being tight on the application or is it really worth just sticking with pads?

 

[Tomcat825]

Compared to a layer of thermal paste thermal pads are quite thick.

You may find that the heatsink won't be in contact with the components if you use paste.

Did you mistype the last word as paste instead of pads? That seems a bit contradictive to me, surely the paste would put the components closer to the heatsink as its thinner than the pads?

 

[Tomcat825]

Ah yes, fair enough. I'll stick with Thermal pads then. Hwoever, I've never used them or read up about them... do either of you have any suggestions as to a good "make" of them? Or are they pretty much just thermal pads and that's it, 1 make fits all and does the job of any?

 

[Tomcat825]

Ah that's brilliant. Thanks a lot mate!