This is something that simply, should not happen. This kind of mishap should have been weeded out during R&D.
I won’t say any more on it right now, and I definitely won’t excuse the behaviour. I do, however, want to give advice to anyone affected.
If you can RMA, then do it. If you just don’t want to deal with all that, and you want it fixed, whether you’re directly affected, or if you just have a hot/slow GPU, I strongly recommend redoing the thermal material. You don’t have to go all out with fancy phase change material or anything (though, that is definitely an option if you want to spend the money on it), but repasting shouldn’t be difficult.
My recommendation is to do a small amount of research and try to find something that’s not too expensive that is hopefully non-conductive, so any screw ups don’t end your card. If you can get thermal pads that are the right size, you might as well replace those at the same time.
Most of the time, getting the cooler off is simply a matter of taking off the backplate, unbolting the cooler from the GPU chip location (remove the tension bracket), then carefully pulling it apart, and disconnecting any fan cables/RGB as you go.
Clean existing thermal compound off with tissue/paper towel, etc, then clean and polish the surfaces (both the GPU and the cooler side) using alcohol, generally isopropyl, and either a microfiber cloth or something else lint free. In a pinch, q-tips work. Both sides should be a near mirror finish when you’re done, though, depending on the cooler, it may not have been machined to a near-mirror, so just clean it until your cleaning cloth/qtip comes away mostly or completely clean.
Once cleaned, apply new compound, fix any thermal pads and reassemble (reverse of disassembly). Be very careful when reattaching the tension bracket to move in a criss-cross or “x” pattern, always go opposite of whatever one you just tightened, and tighten everything just a little as you criss-cross the plate to ensure equal pressure across the cooler. Everything else should be trivial in terms of order.
Once everything is tightened and secure, reinstall the card and test.
