plastic on OEM laptop heatsink

[morphemes]

I decided to upgrade my CPU. I removed the heatpipe & there was this black sticker on the GPU portion. It looks like this:

Anyway, there must have been a bit of dust over the GPU die, because the die itself & the copper plate have indentations & scuffs. So I decided I needed to lap the heatsink & I had to remove that black sticker.

The CPU also had a piece of white plastic stuff that covered everything but the die.

I ordered some adhesive thermal pads & was planning to cut them to size, leaving a space for direct contact between die & heatsink, but I'm wondering if I even need to bother.

 

[Darknecron]

You needn't bother. Just thermal paste will do.

 

[magellan]

The black stickers might be thermal pads. They take the place of TIM.

I had always understood that thermal pads were never as good as TIM.

 

[morphemes]

I was a bit worried that its main function was to be electrically non-conductive.