A Reddit user recently reported that his reference AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card reached 110C Junction temps while playing Modern Warfare II. However, when he contacted AMD to request an RMA, he was denied, with the company stating that “Temperatures are typical. Please contact us again if there is a problem.” Another user successfully submitted a request, but was denied a refund for the previously opened box. Since then, the company has faced some criticism for the problem, particularly given the growing number of reported cases.
More cases of high temperatures on AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards are being reported, with companies such as PowerColor stepping in to assist customers.
Prior to this new AMD development, NVIDIA faced criticism for overheating and melting 12VHPWR connectors on the flagship NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, which surpassed thirty people and reported cases of issues after the graphics card was released.
The AMD situation is unique in that it is currently affecting both the reference and AMD-manufactured Radeon RX 7900 series GPUs. It applies to any cards sold by AMD partners or the company, but not to custom-built GPUs that use the same graphics architecture. According to De8auer in the video below, a flaw in a few coolers or mounting designs is suspected:
AMD published an article on its blog three years ago titled “AMD Radeon Community Update: More Control Over GPU Power and Performance, Enhanced Thermal Monitoring, Maximized Performance.” When discussing junction temperatures in the AMD Radeon VII GPU’s enhanced thermal monitoring, they made the following statement:
… Instead of setting a conservative, ‘worst case’ throttling temperature for the entire die, the RadeonTM RX 5700 series GPUs will continue to opportunistically and aggressively ramp clocks until any one of the many available sensors hits the ‘hotspot’ or ‘Junction’ temperature of 110 degrees Celsius. Operating at up to 110C Junction Temperature during typical gaming usage is expected and within spec. This enables the RadeonTM RX 5700 series GPUs to offer much higher performance and clocks out of the box, while maintaining acoustic and reliability targets.
“Kevin,” one of the technical engineering leads on the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, does state that the company is aware of the hotspot issue and is actively investigating and putting together a plan of action “to repro and collect serial numbers” as of yesterday. He goes on to say that the current COVID situation overseas is slowing things down, but he agrees that a mechanical issue would fall under the category of creating and fulfilling an RMA for consumers. Still, they are looking into firmware updates to address isolated incidents where a software fix rather than a hardware replacement is required. “Kevin” also discusses edge heating, which is the temperature near the edge of the silicon on a GPU, stating that 90° edge temperatures are abnormal, but 70° edge temperatures are normal.
“PowerColorSteven,” a Reddit user and PowerColor representative on the platform, is doing his part to help consumers with the current AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card issue. For those who don’t remember Steven, we mentioned in this article that the AMD RX 6700 XT series GPUs were shipping with the thermal pad covers still attached, which caused high temperatures from the graphics card at the time. For the past few days, the sales representative has been closely monitoring this issue and has recently posted it as a pinned thread on Reddit:
uh… just adding this in here in case anybody has not seen my other posts.
if you are dealing with the 110c issue and nobody else is helping you out. doenst matter which (AIB you bought this from) you bought it from. send me an email or direct message (since my emails are not working right today) (also, please dont use chat, that shit dont work right). i am putting together a list for my AMD contacts of how many issues we are seeing. they asked if it was just a few users. i said its def more than a handful, so now i need to show some sort of backing for my fat mouth. send me serial numbers. i am sending an email to the AMD guys with how many units are affect. powercolor. sapphire. gigabyte. amd direct. whatever. send me serial numbers. hopefully amd will get some news for all of us, but regardless, when i hear something of substance, i’ll make a post to provide some level of guidance on how to go about getting this sorted out.
— User “PowerColorSteven,” aka “sales guy or something” on Reddit
However, it is difficult to determine which companies accept and fulfil RMAs, as a number of documented cases have stated that some are allowed while others are denied, even when the same manufacturer is involved. Several other theories about the problem have emerged, ranging from uneven cold plates to using a graphite thermal pad to solve the problem. With the number of cases increasing during the initial reports, it is not recommended to alleviate the problem but to wait until AMD issues an official statement or accepts a series-wide RMA.
News Sources: Tom’s Hardware, Reddit (AMD), AMD blog, Reddit (PowerColor)
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