Some time ago we relayed the information about abnormally high temperatures for the latest RX 7900 XTX. Some owners of the card mentioning temperatures exceeding 110°c. This problem seems to be concentrated on the reference designs of the RX 7900 XTX. Quickly, a bad application of thermal paste and pads when mounting the card was pointed out. Der8auer took the RX 7900 XTX further to identify possible flaws and may have found something. Working on the analysis of four reference boards, he seems to have discovered that the main reason for the high temperatures would be a faulty vapor chamber.
RX 7900 XTX: a faulty heat sink?
According to him, the vapor chamber that forms the heart of the heat sink does not work as expected. The coolant (gas) in the chamber cannot circulate properly after condensation, which leads to overheating during prolonged testing. In practice, the coolant is supposed to vaporize at the hot spot (above the GPU) and then recondense at the other end of the circuit, removing the stored heat. The problem for AMD is that this design of steam chamber equips its own cards but also the cards of brands that deliver versions with the reference design.
