Replacing thermal pads (memory) on 9600 GT?

[Pikarya]

So I got a 9600 GT for free and decided to clean it up. Never messed with any low-end coolers/videocards before that actually used the "thermal-pad" to single connected heatsink design. Most of the ones I've had use separate heatsinks to cool the memory.

Quick question, should I bother just leaving the thermal pads as is, or should I remove them then use something like arctic silver 5, or OCZ Freeze on the memory chips, then placing the cooler on top.

Not really sure what to use in this scenario, as the memory chips don't technically have a heat spreader lol.

Spoiler: show

http://i34.tinypic.com/i1f8me.jpg

edit: Some websites say to just remove the pads completely and run raw. The reason why I got this card free is because my friend says it constantly overheats (it had a lot of thermal on it OEM). I've read reviews that this card is plagued with that, which can cause crashes/reboots/etc.?

[Evanos]

It looks like you may have already found your answer, but sometimes the thermal pads can be useful. I have a 5970 and stripped the stock cooler off of it to go aftermarket and in some places I needed to have the thermal pads to ensure enough spacing to prevent unwanted shortages (this aftermarket cooler didn't have much room). I did, however, put some arctic silver on my VRMs as those are known bottleneck for the card that I have and that really helped my VRM temp a lot (with help of the aftermarket cooler was actually able to run a pretty hefty overclock without the card going over 70C).

My biggest question though is does your card have actual connections to the cooler at the memory? Or do the pads act more as padding? If it's the former, a thin layer of paste probably wouldn't hurt.

[Olo401]

So I got a 9600 GT for free and decided to clean it up. Never messed with any low-end coolers/videocards before that actually used the "thermal-pad" to single connected heatsink design. Most of the ones I've had use separate heatsinks to cool the memory.

Quick question, should I bother just leaving the thermal pads as is, or should I remove them then use something like arctic silver 5, or OCZ Freeze on the memory chips, then placing the cooler on top.

I would remove the pads & replace 'em with thermal compound. Graphics cards use different compounds from CPUs tho, at least that's my understanding. The one I hear about most often is Arctic Cooling's MX-3.

And NEVER run rawdog - no pads and no grease is VERY BAD.

[Knyghtmayre]

Well, pads/grease is only there to ensure maximum contact between chips and heatsinks. If the 2 are already completely flush (which never happens at least without lapping, thus the need for paste/grease/pads) then there's really no HARM in using none of it. That being said, no I wouldn't really advise going without it. MX-3 or Shin-Etsu is what most use for GPUs from what I hear.

[Pikarya]

Replaced everything with a generous amount of thermal, dropped temps considerably, but the fan seemed to never spin up during load. Downloaded Rivatuner and set the fan to 100% and it seems that fixed the problem.