If they leaked changed them, I strongly advice.
Silicon oil becomes sticky and dust will stick to it and both are insulators. The dust will bunch up around little components which are not cooled and act as insulator and than dust attracts moisture which is not a good friend with circuits. After that you might miniscule discharges of electricity (because of the moisture in the dust) among components which will become critical.
Silicone oil can penetrate the epoxy of integrated circuit. Additionally, any residue or dirt that the oil dissolves can increase its conductivity, that is the reverse if we don't have moisture
You can see bellow on the left, that brown droplet, that is silicon oil with changed color that already had a chemical reaction with the PCB protective layers or soldering base.
On the right hand side you see how dust got collected by the silicon oil around components while the rest of the PCB is clean.
View attachment 388631
What you see in the picture is my 1080 TI which use to run with the leaky original EVGA thermal pads.
Use to have VRAM temps close to hotspot temps but usually more I changed thermal paste on the GPU and replace the thermal pads with thermal putty. If my GPU temp is 65 C VRAM sit around 59C.
You need a silicon brush(very important), Alcohol 99%, caliper and the thermal pads.
First you need to measure you old thermal pads with the caliper to find the thickness or find data exactly for your card on all pads thickness.
Only than you can order the new pads when you already know the thickness.
Did Samsung or Hynix or Micron gave you in writing that their DDR6X resist at certain temperatures for a certain number of hours or days?
I believe not. Do you have such data I'll be very interested, please.
IMHO 95 C is critical because simply you don't know for how long that thermal stress can last before one single memory chip gives up, and than you have a brick not a GPU.
The card manufacturers safe margins are plain BS. RMA a dead card with burnt VRAM see how they gonna find a little scratch on the shroud and deny the RMA Asus, Gigabyte and others. The channel down below is full of that to.
GPU throttles down on high temps not gonna burn but, VRAM does. Is really not worth the risk. Is one of major factor faults for 2000 and 3000 series. North West channel on YT is full of such repairs.
Just think why the mem controller throttle down your M2 when is 70 C. M2 does have memory chips right? Some controllers throttle down the M2 even on lows like 50-60C, if remember well is some of the P3.
Copper mods you have to be careful, you can't go with little square shims over VRAM and certainly not thermal paste. We usually have line of 2 or 3 mem chips. You better use a long copper shim to cover let's say 3 mem chips, to prevent moving out of the place while reassemble the card which will result in shorts. Also thermal putty will prevent that. How long copper shim also help with, not all mem chips run at same temp, with longer copper shims you spread the heat evenly or close to.
You need thermal putty instead of thermal paste, you make sure thermal putty overflow over the mem chip and covers the little components near the chip to prevent shorts as well.
You have to bare in mind how thick is the thermal putty you apply to prevent shorts and come with the right thickness for the shims.
Copper backplate mod is very good also but than you need a lot of thermal putty to prevent shorts. If you want to go cheaper make sure the contact patches are tall, at least 1.5mm or 2mm.
Industry standard said at least 0.3 mm distance but I would go higher than that, copper is highly conductive.
With copper mod plate you really need anti sag support for the GPU , copper is really heavy compared with Al.
There are some plastic film that are quiet thermal conductive which some manufacturers apply on the backplates to prevent shorts. I have to find the exact material is interested and I'm gonna test.
No worries you card is fine and has 10GB not 8GB, It will go for another 1-2 years in terms of performance.
I have same screen as you but just a 1080 TI. Even mine does well in 1440P if I cap the FPS. I can't expect my card to go on 100 FPS in the new games.
The only game it drops under 50 FPS is HD 2 @1440P @ Native settings which are just above Ultra settings.
I hope you have anti sag support for your card. A common issue with 3000 series is that pads underneath VRAM and GPU get ripped in the PCB substrate. Even by sagging the pads can be ripped and usually this kind of issues are out of repair bracket. Another issue of 2000, 3000, 4000 series is that PCBs are very thin.
The main cause > lack of Lead in the soldering. Lead gives elasticity to soldering joints without it, soldering joints becomes brittle. A single fissure in one of thousands soldering joints of a GPU can become a major issue with a chain reactions.
MSI was one of the first companies to jump in the ECO ship so they use the soldering base without lead. As I remember Asus and Gigabyte followed. To replace the lead you need another metal with high elasticity and conductivity >Silver< which is expensive you need more than 5 % of silver in the soldering base to give the desired and need it elasticity, resins also becomes brittle and are not strong enough.
PNY sit back and kept using soldering with lead. I was looking at some 4070 made by PNY it said clearly with a warning sign on that page that contains lead.
Now pls someone tell me how is that silver in soldering base is sustainable? Is expensive and is
already has extensive use for various things in Automotive and Weapon Industry, Pharmacology etc. also in manufacturer computer hardware(as early as 1990), now if they add it in soldering is really unsustainable.
For example the stocks for silver mining companies increased form last summer to now from 430$ to 800$, that will affect the prices of Silver but can't tell how much.
The electronics without lead will fill up faster the landfills and will become more problematic for environment than the use and recycling of the lead. NorthWest repair guy which is much more experienced in electronic circuits said that and I totally agree.
Lead will be toxic for people who' will bring the lead over 380 C (when toxic fumes are released) not for users of hardware contain soldering with lead.