Clevo p170em + gtx 980m

I replace all my thermal pads anyway and hand tune it.

 

Thanks for helping When it comes to pads and stacking them, does one glue them against the
card and to each other, or do they stay in place simply by the pressure of the heat sink?

I'll ask you the same question as I asked MKazmer above

 

It's always different so I just buy different sized sheets and tweak it.

 

The pads have a slight gumminess to them that helps hold them in place. Meaker is right, you want to buy different thicknesses. I personally like the thermal conductivity of fujipoly and Gelid GP-Extreme. However, they are more dense than Arctic thermal pads, meaning they are less forgiving and you will want to be more precise with the thickness you use. If you make it too thick in one area, you might not achieve proper contact in the surrounding areas. The image below is for a different machine, but the thickness of pads will likely be similar for your system. This should help give you a starting point. Then just test fit it. When I first did it, I like to be precise to I bought a digital caliper for $10, then put kaplan tape over the GPU die to protect it and test fit the card with the heatsink. I then I cut a stack of paper (25 sheets) into thin strips and stacked them to gauge the thickness of the gap between the surface of the heatsink to the surface of the components (memory, VRMs, and MOSFETs). Then I measured the thickness of the paper and took note of it. I used padding slightly thicker than the measurements since it will squeeze down a little.

I didn't mean to type so much, but I remember feeling uncertain about this the first time I swapped a gpu in a laptop and I hope this helps.

The gpu below is a 980m, the components on other gpus should be similar, but the VRMs might be a different height.

 

Just remember at 0.5mm you could be looking at manufacturing tolerance differences.