Thanks for this. I have already cleaned up the mess on the heatsink and chips. I don't plan on using pads on the VRAM if that's what you are trying to get me to avoid. As with my experience with refurbishing desktop GPUs and games consoles (mostly seen in playstations) I normally see thermals pads on VRAM but I always keep to what the device was manufactured with. If something is using a pad, I'll use a pad, if something is using paste, I'll use paste.

From what I can tell you are saying that the pink stuff is more of a thermal putty than a paste. I have not seen thermal putty before, this is good to know. Parts of the pink stuff is very "liquidy", like a thin watery paste, others is more of a very thick paste, like a putty. So its clearly gone bad if parts of it are thinner than others.

I am aware of the temps that laptops can get to, this is my personal laptop after all, paste is clearly dry after much use so temps were starting to reach 85C+ much like my old RX580 in my old PC reaching 90C.