Best Brake pads for Volkswagen Golf

I have the R brakes on my car, those were fairly easy to sourse as they can be bought remanufactured off Rockauto and they are also available as Passat VR6 brakes but no one seems to note that. Also the CC with the VR6 has them stock. Those can be found at scrap yards but agian everyone searches R brakes but the other models are the same just not painted blue. I found my kit on ebay for 750$ and it had everything for the swap, front and rear also rotors and calipers and caliper carriers. To me that is a good bang for the buck in terms of improvement in braking that I saw and the cost associated even if I would have gone with new hardware.

Hawk HPS 5.0 HB544B.628 HB625B.760 Edwin Mangune from Hawk Performance Products Group recommends these for our Golf R.

However I have Carbotech brake pads, the 1521's for the street and then for the track day I had XP12 (front) XP10 (rear). Pads are compatible with the rotor, and I had the track pads well bedded in.

I also currently have EBC red installed with golf R retaining clips and tyrol sport brake caliper stiffening kit and tyrol sport stainless steal brake lines and the noise was not present until maybe around 8,000 miles into the new pads. The car still stopped on a dime, thats all I was really concerned about.

nobody mentioned Carbotech 1521 yet? they are pricey but work really well for a DD and have low dust.

My buddies R with HRE FF01's and AP Racing 6 piston brakes.

Stock pads have always been like that. My MKIV was like that as well especially in the rear. So I changed them with Mintex pads.

Brakes feel really grabby, brake very well IMO

I have a clunking noise coming from my front brakes, whenever i hit a bump. This has been ruled to be the outside pad moving around in the caliper. Pretty much everything else in the front suspension has been changed, so i'm pretty sure it is the pad. Mechanic had the car yesterday and said everything looks tight as well. The car stops fine, and there's plenty of pad wear left so i'm not going to switch out the pads or anything. I was hoping someone could chime in and let me know if there's something that can be done to get rid of the "clunk", or do i just live with it. Anyone else ever have this issue? FYI, It's a 2000 Golf with Hawk HPS pads.

Not amazed by my mintex pads either but i havent tried anyhing else- all i can say is that i thought they would have made a bigger difference.