Disassembling a 5850 - Help?

[silberdrachi]

So my graphics card is rather old and  wanted to see if i could get it to last just a little bit longer before i had to buy a new card. So a friend suggested that if i reapplied the thermal paste to the gpu that i might get some less extreme tempatures. So i bought some paste and started disassembling the card, but ive run into a small snag and im not sure where to go from here. On the underside of the heatsink there is a bunch of thermal pads that were on top of the ram, and when i removed the heatsink they didnt come off cleanly. I think the thing is so old that they just werent able to hold together.

 

So what do i do now? Should i just put the card back together (with the new paste) and try to get the thermal pads to line up? Can i remove them? If i remove them should i replace them with some thermal paste?

[megadarkwood]

I think you may need new thermal pads

[J-man]

I would assume it would be best to replace them.  You can find thermal pads here... http://www.frozencpu.com/index.html .  You might be able to buy a sheet and cut it to size.

[brownninja97]

Get new pads dont risk it. Either that or get a new gpu as its not really worth putting more money into your older gpu.