EVGA SC2 1080TI "Artifacts" After changing paste and pads

[Verderex]

Hello! Today I decided to change the thermal paste and thermal pads of my GPU. I've opened it before and have changed the paste through the years without any problem until now.  So I cleaned the GPU, I removed the old original thermal pads and placed new ones that are same thickness. I put the GPU together and then tested it out. The PC booted without any problems. I opened up MSI Afterburner to check how the temps are going and there were in the 40s and slowly started to climb up until it reached 52 as idle temp and my PC froze and the fan speed of the GPU ramped up to 100%. I gave the PC a quick restart and afterwards there was no POS beep for like a minute and when it did, it showed Windows loading it but with very heavy artifacts, if its even that. I took the GPU out, opened it up ...in fact few times. Changing with new pads, less thicker, more thicker and finally the old ones. No success. It still waits around a minute for POS which is long time, because its usually happens in the first 5s of starting the PC and afterwards atifacts and it doesn't even want to boot to Windows properly. Sometimes it reaches screen where it says that Windows did not boot properly and needs restart. Sometimes it tries to load windows, restarts itself 2 times and then "No Display". How in the world I killed my GPU. I hope its not dead but it seems kind of dead to me. I hope that there is some kind of fix for this...
https://i.imgur.com/iGZyRxL.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/DqvWVB1.jpeg

[Levent]

Placement of those thermal pads are weird. Which card do you have exactly?

[Verderex]

2 minutes ago, Levent said:

Placement of those thermal pads are weird. Which card do you have exactly?

EVGA SC2. The pads are placed at the exactly same spot as the Original ones.

[Levent]

Just now, Verderex said:

EVGA SC2. The pads are placed at the exactly same spot as the Original ones.

Can you confirm all pads are making contact and also do a repaste with less thermal paste? Amount of thermal paste is usually not a worry but at since this is just troubleshooting.

[Verderex]

Already did a repaste, like I said I tried swapping between thinner, thicker and original pads. Nothing changes.

[Verderex]

3 hours ago, Levent said:

Can you confirm all pads are making contact and also do a repaste with less thermal paste? Amount of thermal paste is usually not a worry but at since this is just troubleshooting.

Update: I might've found the problem. It seems that the thermal paste is conductive. If I clean it up good and place it only on the chip would it be fixed?

[m9x3mos]

3 hours ago, Verderex said:

Update: I might've found the problem. It seems that the thermal paste is conductive. If I clean it up good and place it only on the chip would it be fixed?

Eeek.

That isn't good. Hopefully that would work if you can clean up the smd around the die. I would strongly suggest getting a paste that is not conductive or capacitive. I used mx-4 and have always had good luck. 

[Verderex]

18 hours ago, m9x3mos said:

Eeek.

That isn't good. Hopefully that would work if you can clean up the smd around the die. I would strongly suggest getting a paste that is not conductive or capacitive. I used mx-4 and have always had good luck. 

I'm also using MX-4 but this time I was out of it. So I had some CM MasterGel on hand that I haven't used before. I checked the package but there was nothing other than the name of the product. Later on I checked their site on that paste and it turns out that its HIGHLY conductive.