PowerColor RX 6700 XT card with thermal pad covers still on is discovered by the user.

The article here mentions that the user found this before inserting the card which agrees with the original thread on Reddit which I read 1 or 2 days ago (can't remember which day exactly). I saw the OP mentioned he found this when he was looking at his GPU before installing it in the system.

Of the few graphics cards I have purchased over the past several years (granted, all NVIDIA cards), all have used thermal paste on the GPU and thermal pads on the RAM, so this is what I would have expected.

 

Didn't the Vega cards have some fancy hi-tech pads because the GPU itself and the HBM modules were of different heights? Or maybe I'm remembering wrong. I wonder what the Nvidia pro cards using HBM were using.

 

From my brief research, it looks like the reference blower style RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 used thermal paste on the GPU/HBM stacks. I couldn't find any pictures of the A100 GPUs, so I can't say for sure if they use paste or pads for the HBM, but I'm guessing they use paste and some kind of substrate to ensure the height of the HBM stacks and GPU are the same since it's immediately around the GPU. Due to the power consumption, I'd be surprised if pads could keep up with the thermal dissipation required for the GPU itself and thermal pads so close to the GPU might interfere with even mounting pressure for the GPU.

I didn't take time to look for any other HBM GPUs to see what solution was used for them.

 

I'm pretty sure that not a single graphics card manufacturer would use a thermal pad for the GPU as it is not nearly as efficient as thermal paste. Thermal pads are used because the contact surfaces of say the ram chips are not 100% flush or level with the heatsink and would not make enough contact.
Also who cares at what temp plastic melts? It is an insulator and would prevent the thermal pad from being able to conduct the heat from the ram to the heatsink properly thus leading to probable overheated RAM chips.

 

@Wolf9an9
funny you should have made a quick web search to get some numbers.
e.g.: there are many materials (incl plastic (based) stuff), that transfers energy much better than air (0.025)...
you can put freaking cork (you know, as in wood) on it, and it will transfer heat..

completely ignoring the fact the card should have safe gurads to prevent overheating thru throttling clocks, dont care if its gpu or ram.


https://www.electronics-cooling.com/2002/05/the-thermal-conductivity-of-thermal-insulators/