ilyama
Another thing...
Imagine someone who pull all the pads... but who overclocks like a pig, at the maximum of the card, if he also use a "too much silent" curve... he will have the same temperatures than me with no pads ?
Gamer Nexus mentioned a 24C difference by just installing the pads, that's a BIG difference. Even if someone overclock the card i believe his VRM temps can still be lower than someone without the pads.
As for the GPU core temps his temps will be higher than yours because the thermal pads aren't supposed to change the core temps, just the VRM (and now the VRAM too with the new pads). In other words his GPU core temp will be higher than yours but the VRM temps will probably be lower than yours.