Question regarding thermal pads - thickness and heat transfer rating

[Euphoria]

Hi everyone, I've been trying to find out exactly what thickness the thermal pads are on the Gigabyte G1 Gaming 980Ti as I need to strip mine to repaste them as temps are getting pretty high on them over the past 6 months.
Most owners of the G1 980Ti I've asked say different values, anywhere from 0.5mm to 2.5mm, no one seems to know for certain, so if anyone here knows what thickness they are for 100% sure please let me know.

 

Also, with cooling something hot like the VRMs on a card like this, is there a minimum or optimal thermal transfer rating they need to have, e.g. W/mK - I saw EKWB pads are rated at 3.5W/mK but others from Thermal Grizzle go up to 10W/mK or more, so I wondered if maybe I need higher rated ones for running on air?

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I've only ever used the pads that come included with a waterblock, I've never had to buy separate ones and replace them on a card when putting the stock coolers back on.

Thanks, appreciate any advice.

 

[Edit] - Also, I tried contacting Gigabyte directly and they were as helpful as a chocolate fireguard! They took a week to reply and when they finally did reply it was a generic copy n' paste; "This information is privileged and for internal use, we cannot give this info out to the public. We do not encourage people to take apart our products, please contact our warranty departme... blar blar blar.

[W-L]

3 minutes ago, Euphoria said:

-SNIP-

Your best option is to take apart the card and use a pair of calipers to measure the thickness of the pads. In general higher W/mK helps with heat transfer but they aren't absolutely necessary unless your trying to squeeze every last bit from it. 

[Euphoria]

7 minutes ago, W-L said:

Your best option is to take apart the card and use a pair of calipers to measure the thickness of the pads. In general higher W/mK helps with heat transfer but they aren't absolutely necessary unless your trying to squeeze every last bit from it. 

3

I did think of doing that but I thought the original pads would be squashed and might appear thinner than they were when they were installed, so I thought I'd ask around to see if anyone happened to know.

[W-L]

1 minute ago, Euphoria said:

I did think of doing that but I thought the original pads would be squashed and might appear thinner than they were when they were installed, so I thought I'd ask around to see if anyone happened to know.

They don't get squeezed that much, around the edges you'll get close to the original thickness. 

[Euphoria]

13 minutes ago, W-L said:

They don't get squeezed that much, around the edges you'll get close to the original thickness. 

That's a good point, thank you. 

[Mick Naughty]

Just measure. Transfer won’t really matter. You won’t see the difference.