Anyone replace thermal pads on gpu?

So, I'm planning on taking the laptop apart to repaste. Figured if you're going to go through all that trouble, may as well make the most out of it. Does everybody here just reuse the existing thermal pads? Would it help/matter if new ones were used? In that case what thickness/brand is recommended?

 

I've always just reused the stock ones as I don't think getting aftermarket pads will do it much justice.

I was also thinking of replacing them before I did my repaste....

 

i replaced the thermal pads in my alienware 15 R1 and my inspiron 15 7537 with Artic Thermal pads with 6W/mk 0.5 mm tickness

 

Nice! Did you put a piece of the pad on both the memory AND the heatsink where the memory would be aligned? Wouldn't that be too much? Plus with the two stacking there could possibly be air bubbles trapped. Did you notice any difference?

 

Thermal pads are generally safe to reuse as they're not on high heat generating components like the cpu and gpu cores, so i'd say it's safe to reuse the same pads 2-3 times before needing to replace (ofc that's assuming they aren't drying out).

I'm no repasting expert though so take my words with a grain of salt.

 

no, only 1 layer of thermal pad (first picture is my alienware 15 and the second one is my inspiron ... different notebooks)