I am in the process of changing out things on my Dell Latitude C600 after the fan died- in order to get at the fan connector, I had to remove one of the plates, which contains two thermal pads: one for the Rage 128 8MB graphics, and one for the chipset. I figured out that the thermal pad thickness for the Rage 128 is 1mm, and the chipset thermal pad's thickness is 2mm. I bought some cheapo 2mm thermal pads off of Amazon (something like 1.5w/m-k), because it was for the chipset, and it was a thin strip that only covered around ~30% of the chip's surface.

The 1mm pad that goes onto the Rage 128 is freaking me out a little, though. It's shiny- and it looks like it has metallic particles in it. My question is: Should I get a specific kind of thermal pad for this, or will any old 1mm thermal pad do? (I bought some 3.2w/m-k 1mm thermal pads for use on another laptop which used a cheapo one for the Intel integrated graphics, would using that same stuff work, or would I fry my Rage 128?)

Here is the substance in question. It's somewhat malleable, and crumbles when you pick at it any (I can't tell if that's due to its age or its properties).

Should I use one of those fancy graphite thermal pads? I measured that little square of strange stuff, and it's exactly 30mm x 30mm.