GPU nVidia blue foam on stock cooler needed for RMA

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Average Stuffer
Original poster
Jan 19, 2020
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I need to RMA my 2080 Ti FE that I had in my water cooled loop, so I'm reassembling it with the stock cooling solution. Nearly all of the pads that were on the original cooler stayed in place and look fine so I'm just going to leave them there, but about half of the ?chokes? had a spongy foamy blue thermal material that pulled apart much like one might expect mousse or meringue when I separated the parts. It was pretty fragile (not brittle, more like a light foam) and so I ended up having to clean it off the chips with a paper towel and even some dental floss for where it oozed into the gaps between the memory chips.

The GPU block came with the standard (blue) thermal pads for everything that feel more like plasticy chewing gum (like the green pads in the picture below, but blue) and which don't pull apart or ooze, so I don't really have any more of that same foamy material to replace on the stock cooler.

Does anyone here have any experience with replacing a stock GPU cooler for an RMA process? Did you just use whatever thermal pads you had on hand for the missing pieces? Were you able to find the "blue foamy" type of TIM anywhere? Does any of it matter in the long run?

Picture for reference: