I've noticed a lot of people who seem to be experiencing instability with their Radeon 7 once it gets to peak temperature, Especially the junction temperature which easily hits 110'c on stock clocks/volts which inturn causes system crashes etc...
Now a guy on reddit fixed his horrendous temps by sanding the cold plate or heat spreader, On the actual cooler, The cold plate is far from flat, Pretty concave from the factory which from what I've seen has affected a lot of Radeon 7's regardless of vendor i.e MSI, Asus etc... mine included as it's not making full contact with the GPU die which inturn results in ridiculously high temps which we've seen in the reviews.
I sanded my IHS down using 400 grit sandpaper, Then 800 and then 2000 to get a mirror surface, I did this with wet and dry sand paper and I also wrapped the sandpaper around a square metal block to make sure I would get an even flat surface.
I put Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut TIM on and low and behold the temps have drastically dropped, This is a MAJOR manufacturing error, Whoever makes these blocks needs to have their contract pulled.
Max fan: 49'C and 72'C Junction
Auto fan: 57'C and 76'C Junction
Before making the cold plate/heat spreader actually flat my junction temps would easily reach 110'c within a few minutes using auto fan and my GPU core temps would reach around 70'c.
That right there should tell you there is something severely wrong, @AMD whoever you and your partners have a contract with to manufacture these heatsinks, Get someone else.
Original Reddit thread showcasing the fix for this manufacturing fault.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/arrxt2/radeon_vii_how_to_drop_40c_on_your_stock_cooler/
Here is a picture of Gamers Nexus doing a contact test, As you can see the middle of the die gets no contact at all with the heatsink and using the stock graphite pad to try and make up for this is a serious error, This is due to the block itself being concave, Whoever AMD or the AIB's contracted to make this heatsink did a very poor job at making the surface flat enough to make even average contact with the die.
As a customer I shouldn't have to lightly sand down the heatsink cold plate for it to do its job properly.
