Thermal Grizzly’s Delta Mate waterblock install leaves memory label imprint on pads, here’s what likely happened
Andreas Schilling from Hardwareluxx shared a photo on X (Twitter) of a Thermal Grizzly Delta Mate waterblock installation that briefly gave him a scare. The shot shows the bundled thermal pads after removal, with clear memory markings transferred onto the pads. At first glance it looks as if the pads had ripped the memory chips off the PCB, which would be a disaster for any graphics card or motherboard.
We do not recall similar incidents with other coolers or pads, but the topic clearly struck a nerve. Under Andreas’ post, at least one user reported that something similar had happened to them as well.
The most obvious question is how this can happen in the first place. The pads appear to pull off the printed coating or paint from the memory packages, leaving a clean surface on the chips and a mirrored imprint on the pad. This likely has to do with the exact material mix and tackiness of the pad compound, yet Thermal Grizzly’s own product page does not list enough detail here to draw firm conclusions.
The solvents in some thermal pads seem to dissolve the printing on the GDDR7 memory chips. For a moment, I thought the chips themselves were sticking to them. pic.twitter.com/S8w06OAKIK
— Andreas Schilling 🇺🇦 (@aschilling) December 1, 2025
Thermal Grizzly explains
To clarify the situation, we asked Roman “der8auer” Hartung, who runs Thermal Grizzly, about the photos. Roman told us they had not seen this behavior in their own testing. “ We used our block on multiple Astral cards ourselves for validation with the same Minus Pad Advance pads and we have never seen this happening ,” he wrote, sharing a photo of a card that had been mounted more than ten times with the labels still intact.
Source: Der8auer
He stressed that there is no solvent left in the pads after manufacturing, as they are baked at high temperature. Instead, he sees two likely causes: residue from the stock thermal interface material leaving an imprint on the new pad, or the memory packages being cleaned with a chemical that partially attacked the label before the pads were installed . When asked, Andreas confirmed to have cleaned the memory with isopropyl alcohol. The official guide does not mention any memory cleaning.
Cosmetic issue
So while the photos look alarming, even a fully removed label would not be a technical problem. Roman’s answer points to a cosmetic effect tied to previous handling of the card rather than an issue with the pads themselves. Users who see memory markings on their pads after disassembly probably do not need to worry, as long as the card was mounted correctly and still works as expected.
Still, if this was my ROG Astral GPU, I wouldn’t be happy to see this.
Source: Andreas Schilling (HardwareLuxx)
