My Hybrid AIO kit arrived today and I took the time to get it installed. Everything went off without a hitch. However, as I'm thinking back about one part of the install, I'm nervous I may have screwed up.

During the process of cleaning the old thermal paste off the GPU core, I also cleaned the thermal paste off of the small capacitors that immediately surround the GPU core. So, to help visualize, initially the capacitors immediately around the GPU core had some thermal paste on them that looked like this:


When I was done cleaning, it looked like this:


The capacitors on mine still had slightly more thermal paste than what you see in the picture directly above. But definitely a lot less than the first picture I posted. Just like the first picture above, not all of the capacitors had thermal paste on them but most did. So I'm not sure if this was intentional or just overflow from the GPU core thermal paste.

Regardless, I'm wondering if I should have left the thermal paste on the capacitors in-tact. Otherwise, I'm hoping the thermal paste that came pre-applied to the new GPU cooler/pump will make its way down to the capacitors for cooling. 

I'm hoping someone with some insight can chime in on this. I'm not opposed to going back in and re-applying thermal paste on those capacitors but I'd really like to avoid it if I'm just overthinking this whole thing. 

On another note, the card seems to be performing perfectly fine. Temps with the new AIO are fantastic. After 25 minutes of Heaven Benchmark running with extreme settings, the GPU core never exceeded 55C and MEM2 & MEM 3 never exceeded 60C. This is all 10-15C cooler than how the card performed with the stock triple fan cooler. .  

bcavnaugh
No, and the Thermal Paste should Only go on the GPU Die.
And Heat Sink if you do both side, I do myself using TF8 or MX-4
You can break them if you wipe them to hard or use a Q-Tip so be very carful when cleaning off the Old Thermal Paste.
 
PS Remember to Complete the Elite Signup.
https://www.evga.com/member/elite/

Whew! good to know. I gently slid the edge of a folded paper towel, soaked in some Isopropyl alcohol, in the areas between the GPU die and those capacitors, but didn't physically apply any pressure to the top or side of any of the capacitors. The alcohol worked its way onto and between those capacitors to clean them off.  

Also, thanks for the heads up about the Elite Membership. Just enrolled. 

In the future, grab a super cheap toothbrush.. extremely effective at removing the thermal paste around the die, yet gentle enough it won’t damage anything.

Doesn’t take force to use either. Just gentle scrub, removes all the thermal plaque... I mean.. paste.

Getting non conductive thermal paste of them won't hurt a thing.

The overflow of TIM indicates that enough was used to cover the entire GPU - Die (chip)
 
Using too little or not having coverage distributed across the Entire Die would be an Issue
 
On a GPU (unlike a CPU) that is not a Heat spreader it is the Die 

You want enough TIM to cover all of the GPU, the slight amount of excess TIM squishes out as seen in your OP