Yup, it's awful. No, I won't check the thermal paste in both of my now out of warranty GPU's (not to mention that I've never done so in my life) because I have no thermal pads. I don't have much thermal paste left either.
I watched videos from northwestrepair yt channel and he always said that you have to replace the thermal pads with exactly the same width ones to avoid strain on the gpu. That makes me dont want to replace thermal pads