XPS M1710 - replacing the 7950 GTX

Hey, I'm just about to pull my dead 7950 GTX and send it off for repair ... they say they found the problem with this card failing and have a unique fix so we'll see. They are on Ebay if intersted.
Anyhow, I would like to replace all the thermal pads with a good thermal compound ... I was looking at IC7 synthetic diamond. I am more than capable just never done this with my XPS M1710 so I need a guide. Question is, can all of the thermal pads be removed and replaced with IC7 or is the 1/32" gap between the memory and heatsink too much? I have read that you can fill this gap with pure copper shims but haven't found any details.
I would really like to have a step by step tutorial with pics. Is there such a thing that someone has put together? I've searched the net exhaustively with no luck.
Any ideas?
thanks

Thanks for the replies. I have also since heard back from the guy who is going to repair my 7950 GTX and he has confirmed what you guys have said here ... that substituting the thermal pads between the memory chips and the heatsink with copper shims will result in little if any gain in cooler temps. There are greater concerns to be dealt with apparently. He said they do replace the inferior stock Dell pads with "an industrial compound that is far better than anything Dell or Nvidia uses" so I'm good with that.
I will keep uz informed with how the repaired card performs. Hopefully they have truly found a permanent repair method and this will be the last time I have to deal with a fried 7950 GTX in my XPS M1710 for a long time.
thanks again
Dan

well, I just typed a fairly lengthy review of my repaired card done by CADis Ltd who I found on EBay through a search of "7950 repair" and when I hit submit it took me back to login again and all that typing I did disappeared forever. lol, I'm not doing it again so suffice to say my 7950 GTX is working perfectly again and I couldn't be happier. I'm on the M1710 now and it's been back up and running for about 5 days now so we'll see. The guys at CADis were absolutely superb in every way and definitely know what they are doing.
I'll let uz know if there are any problems.
thanks again.

It was about $180 and that included the shipping back to you and a 30 day warranty. I'd post the link I used but it's likely not allowed but you can find them on EBay by searching "7950 repair". They also repair a number of other models so their ad said. I actually drove right to their shop (huge) so I can verify they are legitimate and excellent to deal with. good luck

yeah, I seriously considered retiring my 1710 and would have had I not found this repair offer for the 7950 GTX. I spent far too much time looking for a solution to this ongoing failure but I was having a hard time accepting defeat and throwing away such a great machine that is still very capable. It's too bad that Dell couldn't have handled the situation better for the sooo many involved but I feel pretty confident that my 1710 will live a better, longer life now, thanks to the "outside" community, including this one. Time will tell.

zzpulp, seems you are one of the few but fortunate that have not had repeated failures with their M1710 ... good for you.
What driver have you found works best for your M1710 / 7950 GTX combo? ... most stable I mean? I'm still running the latest 174.31 (Vista 32) from Dell that is getting pretty old now. Are you aware of any newer stable drivers for this thing? tia

Thanks, I actually tried the Beta 179.48 (122 MB) direct from Nvidia site but it gave me all sorts of major problems ... Memory parity errors, BSOD, artifacts, etc. I rolled back to the 174.31 and it all went away. I've always had the occasional crash with the 174.31 driver but nothing like the Beta 179.48
Now, I didn't uninstall and install the drivers, I just ran the setup.exe as Dell always suggests so I guess that may be the problem. I'll try it that way. I thought maybe the 179.48 was not made for the mobile GPU it crashed so bad right away but it does say "notebook vista32" right in the file name.
The 175.32 (from Nvidia site) I had tried while my 7950 GTX was acting up just before it died so I've shied away from that one. haha
Is the 169.04 direct from Nvidia site or LV2G? ... does it have modded inf?
I've never actually tried a modded display driver but I saw the instructions for a proper install on here the other day so it shouldn't be a problem. My display driver folders probably need a good cleaning up. I'm normally after the most stable driver only but I guess ya never know ... one of the modded drivers may work out better.
Thanks for the tips.

About 4 hours ago now I dumped the Dell 174.31 driver and I installed the 179.29 driver from LV2G with modded inf (first time I've ever used a modded video driver) and I am baffled. For 2-1/2 years since I bought this M1710 the 7950 GTX has consistently run up to 80*C at idle, at which point the Dell Bios would engage the fans on low speed ... who knows at what temp it would stabilize without the fans ... 90 or 100*C?. It's always been this way. Now, after installing this 179.29 modded inf driver (following the proper uninstall/install method posted here) my 7950 has actually stabilized at 68/69*C with NO fans whatsoever. I mean 4 hours now sitting at 68/69*C with zero fans engaging ... not once! This CADis repair and LV2G driver mix has my card running so much cooler I don't know whether to believe my own eyes and fingers or not lol, has anyone else seen a clean driver install accomplish something like this before? I mean my 7950 would run up to 80*C continually until the fans kicked in, even from day 1 when brand new. ... and now all of the sudden it has stabilized under 70*C under the exact same idle conditions. Nothing else has changed. Sounds far fetched eh I'm impressed to say the least!
Huge thanks to you guys that work so hard to help others for so little ... great work!

thanks zz, yeah, it didn't make much sense to me either unless their was some kind of feature in the new driver I installed that slowed the card down during idle or light use. I guess you call that PowerMiser ... seen it mentioned before but I've never seen an option to enable it. Is this PowerMiser an option in the Nvidia Control Panel (I couldn't find it) or is it run automatically in the background?
The 174.31 is the latest driver from Dell so I guess this means Dell does not use PowerMiser.