Navi31 Owners - have you had long term problems with junction temps? Through a strange turn of events, I've actually got my
3rd 7900XTX about a month ago. I'm at 100% "failure rate" for maxing out junction temps (110°, jet turbine fans, etc.) after ~9 months of daily use. Why did I buy three XTX's, you may ask. Fair question, I didn't really. A brief review:
- The OG Reference (RIP) - Bought December 2022 from AMD official store. I was relieved to "not have the high junction temp" problem with the launch batch. Typical gaming would see ~89° junction temp. High junction developed ~10 months later. The card also had some instability and artifacting - thankfully AMD honored the RMA and replaced it. (TBH I think the card was fine. But RMA window closing!)
- The Encore - This was replacement Reference model from 1st RMA. Began daily use in Nov 2023. Again, ran just fine (~89°) for at least 6 months and left service in October '24 and by then it would regularly get 105°+.
- The Wildcard - (Sapphire Pulse 7900XTX). TLR buddy had Cable Mod brand cables fail and destroy the connectors on this card. Cablemod wrote him a check for after-tax price, no questions asked. (Without needing to send melted card!). He had YouTube guy NW Repair fix power connectors, cost him like ~$200 or so with shipping and everything. He bought the Sapphire Nitro + (jealous) with his blank check. Sold to me for $450. Couldn't pass it up! (Especially knowing no chance to buy a 24GB AMD card soon). Interestingly, after a month or so of running this card, it hits 110° junction temp! It absolutely did NOT for first week or so.
Anyways, with all that out of the way - I have to wonder: Could I just have incredibly bad luck, or does every 7900 XT/X have this happen sooner or later?
Note - aside from gaming ~20 hours or less/week, I have been tinkering with many AI image-gen models. They are very intense, short duration workloads (90 sec or less). Perhaps the rapid heat/cool cycles are worse for the factory paste than long gaming sessions with more steady workloads.
All that to say, planning to replace paste with PTM 7950, and figured I should replace all thermal pads since coolers will be off. I can't seem to find dimensions for the pads anywhere! TechPowerUp's teardown has great pictures of both model's pads, but not sure what thickness to order.