Throttling is nothing scarier than fire…technically
Among those pointing the finger at NVIDIA over the RTX 4090’s melted power cable was AMD, who was in a somewhat similar situation. The RTX 4090’s power cable was melted because users didn’t follow vague instructions not to bend the cable past a certain point on the case, as reported on AMD’s reference RX 7900 XTX card. The same cannot be said for heat issues.
To clarify, the issue has not been reported with 3rd party RX 7900 XTX cards, only with reference cards provided by AMD. Igor’s Lab was testing his one of these cards and found that the hotspot reached 110C. So far, extreme heat only seems to cause throttling of the card, and we haven’t received any reports of it melting, but it’s still somewhat concerning.
You can check out the original report at Igor’s Lab, where the RX 7900 XTX’s vapor chamber issue was first discovered. If you can get your hands on one of the reference AMD RX 7900 XTX cards, AMD will offer a refund or replacement with a working card, depending on your preference.
