Foam rubber as a heat-conducting pad - who came across?

Question

Iron

The video card ASUS GTX260 fell into the hands, failed. Purchased from hand, worked for several months. After removing the casing and radiators, we saw that heat is removed from the memory chips using a heat-conducting paste, on top of which ordinary foam rubber is glued (!).
The question is simple - has anyone experienced something similar? There is a suspicion that the previous owner tried to "repair" it in this way a few months ago. It's hard to believe that ASUS is having so much fun in production.

Photo (500 KB)

Answer 1

Foam rubber is a priori not thermally conductive - on the contrary, it has been used all its life as a heat insulator - air bubbles separated by fibers allow you to hold the temperature. Feel free to peel off, change the thermal paste, attach the radiator + cooler, and only after that proceed to further testing.

Answer 2

I'm not competent, but perhaps the foam is just for insulation, and not for thermal conductivity. I think that this is after repair, yes, because the rectangles are not even, if they were factory - they would have a factory look.
I feel that I wrote this post in vain, because why advise something, be clever if you don’t understand :)