Thermal Paste or Honeywell PTM7950

[Wraithsiege]

I currently have 9070XT Red Devil Limited Edition on order and I found out that it uses thermal pad instead of thermal paste. Should I swap that thermal pad with thermal paste or not and if not, how often do I need to change that pad

[_I_]

thats as good or better than most pastes
only replace it if the heatsink and gpu die are separated

[r.linder]

PTM7950 is one of the best performing options for thermal compound once it changes phases from pad to paste and it's really easy to cut and apply, but it's just expensive depending on where you get it.

Honeywell says it lasts up to 10 years IIRC.

All GPUs use thermal pads, if they used it for the core then they probably used PTM7950 or something similar. Any run of the mill pad on the core would not perform well, so it has to be phase changing.