AMD Vows to Replace Overheating Radeon RX 7900 XTX Boards

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Senior Vice President and General Manager of AMD Talks RX 7900 XTX Issues

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(Image credit: AMD)

In an interview with Senior Vice President and General Manager of AMD Radeon, Scott Herkelman, and PCWorld's Gordon Mah Ung, Herkelman confirmed that a small percentage of the company's reference Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards had "temperature issues". A small batch of RX 7900 XTX produced by AMD came with a faulty cooling system that caused the affected cards to overheat. The overheating boards will be replaced, Herkelman promised. The problem only concerns 'Made by AMD' add-in-boards. Radeon RX 7900 XTX devices designed and produced by its partners are not affected.  

The senior vice president of AMD said that the company knew how to identify reference Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards with faulty cooling systems and that all of them will be replaced. He advised those impacted to call AMD if the RDNA 3 based graphics card was purchased from its online store or ask its partners for a replacement if you bought a reference 'Made by AMD' board from them. 

"We have the fix we are ready to send it to you. Just call our tech support line if you bought it from amd.com or if you bought it from one of our AIB partners call them, they have [replacement] units," said Herkelman. "We know how to make sure and identify that they are good, and we will ship it to you right away because we want you to have a great product." 

"It all comes down to a small batch of vapor chamber actually have an issue, not enough water and it is a very small percentage," said Scott Herkelman, Senior Vice President and General Manager of AMD's Graphics Business Unit. "We said OK, that is the root cause." 

Reports about overheating AMD's reference Radeon RX 7900 XTX — which is one of the best graphics cards around — started to show up in the second half of December as numerous users experienced performance degradation as GPU temperature reached 110 degrees Celsius junction temperature. AMD said that 110°C was within specifications of its Navi 31 graphics processor, which is why it should not cause any performance throttling. Later on, it turned out that some of its reference Radeon RX 7900 XTX products shipped with coolers featuring a faulty vapor chamber and therefore not performing as AMD specified, which caused performance degradation. 

The GPU developer stresses that reference "Made by AMD" Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards are safe to use. Furthermore, Made by AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT parts do not have any issues with overheating as they use a different design with a different cooling system. The same is true for all non-reference AMD Radeon RX 7900-series graphics cards made by the company's AIB partners.

Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

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26 Comments Comment from the forums
  • -Fran-
    I find good that AMD (via mr Scott) ate* a good amount of humble pie and acknowledged what rubbed people wrong after the announcements along the issues with the cards now. So, good on them for that.

    Now, it's a bad thing they had to be asked point blank and not issue an official statement before this. That is something they should improve as well.

    Anyway, at least the issue is now fully accepted and RMA process is in place.

    I wish everyone with an affected card good luck with their RMA.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • rDigital
    AMD waited as long as they could before addressing this one. Does it really have to get addressed by tier 1 YouTubers before they take action?
    It feels like bad luck from making fun of Nvidia.
    Reply
  • digitalgriffin
    I would wonder how they would classify "a small percentage of users?". Is that among all 7900XTX boards? Well then yes, only a small percentage of boards made use the vapor chamber because board makers want an excuse for a bigger margin (custom designs). But by the hundreds of reports, that sounds like a high percentage for vapor chambers.

    In some ways, other than labor and shipping, the cost of the vapor chamber replacement will be bore by the vapor chamber mfg. (Like tikata had to pay for airbag r placement). It won't cost AMD that much. But the damage to their rep is far more costly. Thet better darn well recall all boards made with that vapor chamber mfg.
    Reply
  • edzieba
    If it's a bad batch, then have they issued a serial number range of the affected batch(es) in order for customers to proactively tackle the issue?
    Reply
  • digitalgriffin
    edzieba said:
    If it's a bad batch, then have they issued a serial number range of the affected batch(es) in order for customers to proactively tackle the issue?

    Not like car mfg. When they put the car on the assembly line they scan the tag on the part and then scan the windshield code. That way they know the serial number for every assembly on that car and that it is the proper part.

    Somehow I'm doubting each vapor chamber has a serial number.
    Reply
  • OneMoreUser
    -Fran- said:
    I find good that AMD (via mr Scott) ate* a good amount of humble pie and acknowledged what rubbed people wrong after the announcements along the issues with the cards now. So, good on them for that.

    Now, it's a bad thing they had to be asked point blank and not issue an official statement before this. That is something they should improve as well.

    Anyway, at least the issue is now fully accepted and RMA process is in place.

    I wish everyone with an affected card good luck with their RMA.

    Regards.
    How did you come to the "asked point blank" part?

    I find it funny how some people have made a mountain out of almost nothing, especially a few youtubers that have been crying bloody murder which of course had zero to do with them benefiting financially by doing so.

    However on the same time it is rather sad to see that is how the internet work, those that shout the highest and are the most offended gets the attention - facts are simply there to be ignored or at best used as a basis to exaggerate to the point almost anything is a major disaster.
    Reply
  • OneMoreUser
    digitalgriffin said:
    I would wonder how they would classify "a small percentage of users?". Is that among all 7900XTX boards? Well then yes, only a small percentage of boards made use the vapor chamber because board makers want an excuse for a bigger margin (custom designs). But by the hundreds of reports, that sounds like a high percentage for vapor chambers.

    In some ways, other than labor and shipping, the cost of the vapor chamber replacement will be bore by the vapor chamber mfg. (Like tikata had to pay for airbag r placement). It won't cost AMD that much. But the damage to their rep is far more costly. Thet better darn well recall all boards made with that vapor chamber mfg.

    I bet a lot of those "hundred of reports" are less than genuine, not to mention that lots are reports that have been counted multiple times.

    And it would be wasteful if AMD were to recall made with the cooling solution by mfg X, not to mention it would be really annoying for all those with no-issue boards having to deal with it. Suggesting a total recall isn't close to rational.
    Reply
  • Coffee Fueled Curmudgeon
    Not as if they had anywhere else to go, but the lottery of not knowing which of thousands upon thousands of cards already in the distribution chain is affected and will need the gross inconvenience of an RMA leaves a very sour taste.

    A recall would undo some of the irrevocable breach of trust here, the idea that an RMA is a great experience is laughable, literally no one has ever been happy with having to do an RMA, so it seems bizarre that some are now treating the nuisance and inconvenience as manna from heaven. How fickle the internet fanboy is.

    Of course, some, with agendas are complaining that it's a mountain from a molehill created by greedy youtubers, but it's not as if they minded when the roles were reversed a month or so back and Youtubers were blaming Nvidia for operator error. Tubers gonna tube, there's deluded fanboys on both sides all too happy to spam comments sections with faux reports of the same issue and long-winded narrative peddling.
    Reply
  • PEnns
    At the very least, AMD is not blaming its customers & users, like you know who....
    Reply
  • Eximo
    digitalgriffin said:
    Not like car mfg. When they put the car on the assembly line they scan the tag on the part and then scan the windshield code. That way they know the serial number for every assembly on that car and that it is the proper part.

    Somehow I'm doubting each vapor chamber has a serial number.

    But they do have serial numbers on the cards and manufacture dates. Wouldn't take much to track down what days the bad cards were made on and just assume any card between those dates is potentially eligible for replacement.

    I would not be surprised if they did have a serial number sticker on each cooler. This would be done for the express purpose of tracking down incidents like this.
    Reply