Not Enough Water: AMD Identifies Cause of Thermal Issue on Radeon RX 7900 XTX

AMD says it knows why some Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards can overheat, forcing the performance to throttle. Apparently, a small batch of units have a faulty vapor chamber. 

Scott Herkleman, SVP and GM of AMD’s Graphics Business Unit, discussed the root cause behind the thermal issues in an interview(Opens in a new window) with PCWorld. According to Herkleman, AMD has spent the last two weeks trying to identify the problem after some users, including hardware reviewers, noticed throttled performance on the flagship graphics card. 

The company’s investigation traced it back to the Radeon RX 7900 XTX‘s vapor chamber. The water inside can help transfer and dissipate heat from the graphics card. But the company found that a select number of AMD-manufactured 7900 XTX cards sold on AMD.com and through some third-party outlets contain a defect with the cooling system.

“It all comes down to a small batch of our vapor chambers actually have an issue: not enough water,” Herkleman said. “It’s a very small percentage.” 

“Was there a safety concern? There is not a safety concern, we were able to root cause that,” he added. Instead, the problem can only cause a performanace dip when the graphics card hits 110 degrees Celsius, which will force the GPU to slow down.

The good news is that AMD is ready to send out replacement products to affected consumers. “You spent a lot of money to buy this XTX made by AMD, we want to fix it for you,” Herkleman said. “We have the fix. We’re ready to send it to you.”

It doesn’t appear AMD has published an official recall. For now, Herkleman is asking affected consumers to contact the company’s support channels(Opens in a new window) about receiving replacement units. “We’ll ship it to you right away because we want you to have a great product,” Herkleman added.

Hence, owners of the graphics card should check the temperatures while running various workloads, such as games, to see if they’re affected. Herkleman further noted only a small percentage of AMD-manufactured Radeon RX 7900 XTX cards have the issue, not third-party versions of the product.