I have Noctua H1 thermal paste but what to do about thermal pads?
How old is it? If its only 3-4 years old then you don’t have to worry about thermal pads. Just take it apart and if it doesn’t come apart easily (due to the pads being sticky) then heat up the card enough so that they peel away neatly. Use any GPU stress test/benchmark tool and let it run for 10-15 mins for this.
If its older than that then there’s a small chance a few might get damaged while taking the card apart but generally they are okay for way longer than that, also even if the pads appear hard they still work up until they start to become brittle and crumble (could be anywhere between 7-10+ years?). Thermal pads on RTX 30 series might degrade faster as the memory modules run hotter compared to cards from other series so YMMV.
If that happens you can order a thermal pad that matches the size of original ones in width, lots of info about the size and how to do it online so you just google it. GL
Thanks for the Comment will try to open up and Repaste