Thermal pad help, and 5870m question.

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I have, in the past, made a few inquiries about thermal pads as I am quite new and inexperienced at modding and repairing laptops. I hope you guys don't mind answering a few of my questions that I still have.

I have bought a few thermal "pads" for my m15x radeon 5870m upgrade project. They are shinetsu .13mm with 5 watts for thermal conductivity. I noticed that these pads were a bit thin. So my question is, would I be able to use these as standalone? Or should I put the old thermal pads on top of them just for gap filler?
edit: These are the pads in question Shinetsu 35x35mm Thermal Pad - AMD Approved!

For the 5870m question, this is what my 5870m looks like: http://69.64.75.196/images/web_images/731MJ.jpg I've bought it from ebay and it has that orange sheet around the die which I don't know the purpose of. Is there any prepwork needed to be done to it before putting it in?

Thanks for your time!

 

The orange stuff is probably insulating material--this is in case you use an electrically-conductive TIM like AS-5 or such. If you use diamond-based ones, I see no harm in removing them. There isn't, however, any advantage to removing it either.

Also, IIRC thermal pads are technically TIMs that need to not be conductive, since those are memory chips you're dealing with. I'm pretty sure the memory chips are almost precisely touching the heatsinks anyway, it's just that putting conventional TIM might make it bad or something. I remember seeing some pics of a GPU memory chip with some TIM instead of those pads. Meaning, even if it's rather thin or thick, the thermal pad you will be using will reflow and be as thin as possible and fill gaps between your memory and the heatsink.

 

Thanks for the reply. It's fine to use the ones I've got then? A few recommended pads I've seen were around 6watts for thermal conductivity.

 

I'd say yes, but then again I've had little experience dealing with that kind. Try waiting for more answers. And here's a free bump. )