AMD has reportedly declined an RMA request for its Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card which was hitting up to 110C temperatures.
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Hits 110C Junction Temps & Downclocks, User Asks For RMA, Red Team Declines & Tells Him It's Normal
It's been a few weeks since the AMD Radeon RX 7900 series launched and most users are finally getting their cards in their hands after a long wait. However, there have recently been reports of high temperatures (standard and junction) on the reference MBA design. One such issue has now been reported by a Reddit user who bought the reference version of the card yet his card doesn't seem to be working as intended.
Redditor, u/nero1338, posted a few days ago in the r/AMDHelp subreddit that his Radeon RX 7900 XTX reference graphics card was hitting 110C Junction temperatures while playing Modern Warfare II. He states that his fans shoot up to 100% and despite reinstalling the latest drivers and manually setting his case fan speeds to 100%, nothing seems to have worked for him. The Redditor made an RMA request directly to AMD but he was hit by a rejection.
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Hitting 110C Junction Temps (Image Credits: u/Nero1338):
He states that his RMA request for the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Reference 'MBA' graphics card has been declined and AMD states that the 110C Junction temperatures are normal spec for the graphics card. However, what's not normal is the fact that the graphics card is downclocking due to higher temps and causing a loss in performance. Following is what he states:
Hi everyone,
As we know so far, Quite many people have problems with the refererence 7900xtx cards, reaching 110 Junction Temps, 100% fan Speed and still loosing performance due downclocking .
I just got the reply of my RMA request:
————————————
Thank you for your email.
The temperatures are normal if you there is any issue please, contact us back.
Thanks for contacting AMD.
Another user also responded and mentioned that AMD allowed him an RMA request but he can't return it for a refund if the box was opened. Now as for the overheating issue, it looks like this is only a major issue with AMD's own reference 'MBA' design which the red team spared no time during its presentation about how awesome it was and how easy it was for users to upgrade to when compared to NVIDIA's new RTX 40 series cards.
I did collect some data on GPU temp, hot-spot temp and ΔT for some Radeon RX 7900 XTX. A 110 °C hot-spot with thermal throttling should not be normal. So far, only MBA designs are affected. You guys have this on your radar @sherkelman?https://t.co/u766QaoC0p pic.twitter.com/Httjw0O1JP
— Andreas Schilling 🇺🇦 (@aschilling) December 20, 2022
All MBA designs can hit hot spot temps of 110C which seems to be the hard limit before the card throttles down to a lower clock speed & results in lower performance. None of the custom designs face this overheating issue and that's because they use proper 3 to 3.5-slot coolers and custom PCB designs.
However, we can't entirely blame the cooler for this issue as discovered by Der8auer who went through some investigation of this issue encountered by another user. It looks like the issues are largely due to the mounting pressure, thermal paste quality, and the thermal pads used by the cards.
Once new ones are applied and the card is mounted again, the overheating issues are possibly eliminated. But it is still something that shouldn't be overlooked by AMD and not something that the users have to sort out by themselves. It is likely that a few early batches of the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT graphics cards may have been affected by this issue but AMD should at least acknowledge the RMA for them.
