Just to be clear the 7950 pad is not the same as the normal thermal pads for ram chips or mosfets on video cards which are thicker about 2mm. These thicker pads are reusable if you're really careful, the 7950 is not.

Generally pastes give better performance compared to pads.
But there is a very good use case for pads - bare die GPU chips and laptops/notebooks cpu/gpu because the temps on these get too high for pastes and causes excessive pump out. And the high power density of current cpus/gpus is another contributor to pump out. So instead of all the headaches of re-pasting laptop cpu/gpu, slap on a pad like 7950 and you might never need to replace it in future. You can also use 7950 on desktop cpus if you're having problems with pump out but I prefer to get a bigger/better heatsink or dial down power/voltage limits on current intel cpus.

Maxtor xtp-001 might be an acceptable alternative, I'm looking for 7950 myself.

Many people don't know that TG kyronaut is not meant to normal PCs. Its meant for sub-zero cooling builds just for overclocking records where long term pump out is not going to be a problem.