This stuff is wild, I'm waiting for the post explaining how 7950 can help people quit smoking.
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Its so good it cured cancer
i ripped my OEM cpu thermal pad on my 6800 when i was changing the memory pads, still reused it and it was fine
So how did it perform before and after ? PTM7950 before being reused and after being reused ?
I use PTM 7950 for my laptop, an MSI with a 6600m.
With stock MSI paste, the delta between edge and hotspot was as large as 14-16C. With PTM, that hotspot drops to just 10C when overclocked, and as low as 6-8C when playing with locked FPS.
Open my laptop up to clean fans which required moving the entire heatsink, picked PTM from the sides of the die and replaced onto die. Hotspot was still only 10C hotter than edge temps. There was no noticeable drop in performance at all.
Edge temps at ~88w - 80C Hotspot ~88w - 90C
Temps may appear high but keep in mind it's a laptop and it's overclocked.
In my experience it is quite complicated to form back enough material to cover the entire die, i would advise simply to not mess with it once installed, because when done properly it will last for decades depending on the quality (Honeywell brand or generic chinese have different lifespans, even generic ones put regular paste in the dust and will last 5 years or so).
You don't need to cover the entire die. Just leave whatever is left on the heatsink Coldplate and on the die alone. Then just use a plastic tool to scrape any that were pressed out during mounting and re-place them onto the middle of the die.
Mount and tighten as usual. Just by having the mounting pressure along with the heat cycles later will be enough to spread them again. My 1 month experience was enough to see that there were no difference in temps between new and reused 7950