The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX may have defective coolers that lead to overheating.

Many customers believe that the vapor chamber cooler on AMD’s most recent GPUs performs better in a vertical orientation as opposed to a horizontal one. AMD’s most recent GPUs have been noted to suffer overheating difficulties. Testing revealed that some reference AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPUs had defective coolers, despite the fact that vapor chamber coolers should provide nearly the same heat dissipation performance regardless of orientation. Roman “der8auer” Hartung’s testing indicates that AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX RDNA3 GPUs have overheating issues that are brought on by a flawed vapor chamber design.

What der8auer found is that these coolers could have a defect in the manufacturing process, where the liquid inside the vapor chamber faces problems in circulation after condensation. It could relate to manufacturing issues of the cooler itself, with an inadequate amount of fluid or insufficient pressure inside the chamber. For more in-depth testing and performance benchmarks, see the video below. It is important to note that we didn’t see other reports that replicate this behavior, so always take these reports with a dash of salt.