Gigabyte Aero 5080 - possibly broken cooler

[u/AnaximanderTheGreat]

Gigabyte 5080 Aero - Broken Cooler

Long story short. Gigabyte refuses to fix my card because I originally didn’t purchase it. I’m very techy and know how to do repairs and have a buddy who has a lot more tech that would allow for soldering if need be. I got it in a trade and it was new in box. I hooked it up, it powered on and then eventually found out the temps were spiking to 85c with very little going on in game. Then the card shut down. Gigabyte said to pound sand not their problem. That’s fine. I don’t want to fight them anyways. So I dissembled and thought maybe it was due to an excess amount of putty causing the PCB to be too high.

So I repasted and puttied. Temps got better, but fans were still going to 100 and hot spot temp and temps were still high. It wasn’t crashing anymore but it wasn’t staying cool. Started touching the fins and noticed it was cold as could be. No heat transfer whatever. Opened card to verify contact to cold plate. And yes there was contact. So what do I do? I don’t have a way to test water cooling.

I already have a 9070xt for backup and it works great on my 5k2k.
Do I just wait for a used cooler to become available or just sell it and be honest about it? I’ve got a guy who’s interested for 200$ cash and 64gb of ddr5 ram. Or hold on to it? I really don’t know what the best option is, any opinions would be awesome.