Is this thermal paste or a thermal pad on GPU?

I'm planning to upgrade the thermal paste on my laptop to (hopefully ) improve temps a bit.

I recently opened up my laptop to clean out the heatsink, and then took a look at the GPU
Now there is some weird thick thing on between the GPU and heatsink.
I pulled a bit off and it was similar to blu-tak
I took some pics, and I'm hoping you guys can tell me which is it
Sorry for the bad pics, phone camera doesn't have good macro

(Click the link under each pic for the full sized 5mp version)


http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/897/050720101108.jpg


http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/999/050720101109.jpg


http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/342/050720101110.jpg


http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/2016/050720101111.jpg


http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/6225/050720101112.jpg

Thanks

 

Yea the thermal pads are what the vram has in between it and the heat sink.

 

Yep, they're pads alright, try to keep them intact as much as possible. The core is what you're really interested in anyway, though that might have a pad too, it'll be in the middle of the heatsink though so you won't know untill you take it off. Although it's probably better that you replace the pads on the VRAM every time you take off the heatsink (it's not really worth putting paste on the memory), I managed fine with the ones mine came with and it's still running fine after I switched to MX-3.

 

Thanks for the quick replies

So basically, I should leave the thermal pads as they are, and change the paste on the core?

Also, should I add some thermal paste to the pads?

Finally, are there even replacement thermal pads?

 

you would have to buy pads.

Dont put paste on the pads, they are soft so make good contact and paste would just put in another thermal interface which is bad.