CPU: Ryzen 5 5600
GPU: RX 6650xt 8gb
RAM: 16gb @ 3600Mhz
Current monitor: 1080p @ 166hz

I play…
…a lot of CS2
…some Minecraft
…some Sons of the Forest

Is my system able to play my games at 1440p?
If you were me would you upgrade to a 1440p monitor? And if yes which hz rate would you choose for a good price to performance ratio?

Is a high temp hotspot normal, the gpu is at 70c when gaming and hotspot 97c, the gpu is 4 months old, seems kinda high

Hello guys, just wanted to ask on some opinions. I started having this problem after updating to newer driver maybe a year ago. When I alt+tab from game to discord or edge, my top half of monitor starts blinking - randomly. when i tap back in the game it’s ok. I then reinstalled windows, did clean install of drivers and it was ok. Then i needed to update my drivers because of some game I think BF6 and it’s happening again. Do you also experience this problem or how can I solve it. I swear that next build i’m getting nvidia .
Btw I have radeon 6800 16GB

I changed my RTX 5080 FE for an XFX 9070XT and I want to share my opinion.

I must say right away that the issue of replacing the card is not related to money, but to personal interest. I like to test and try different hardware) Over the past year I have used several NVIDIA cards (each for a few months):

• 4060 Colorful mini
• 5070 Gigabyte Eagle
• 5070TI Palit Gaming Pro
• 5070TI Asus Prime
• 5070TI Colorful Battle AX
• 5080 Astral
• 5080 Asus Prime
• 5080 FE
• 5090 iGame Dv2 Vulcan OC 24GB

And now I have a beautiful XFX 9070XT.

The first time (at the end of 2025), I got my hands on a 9070XT Gigabyte Aorus Master - 2 pieces. I was building two identical computers for my friend's children, and he bought these cards. My first impression was mixed - in terms of performance in 4K without ray tracing, the 9070XT was almost on par with my 5080. At least, the difference wasn't significant. This impressed me, considering their price difference. However, I was disappointed by the VRAM temperatures (88-90 degrees) and the noise of the coils, considering that this is a well-built Aorus Master card. And so led all two cards bought at different times in different places. I started looking for information about temperatures and realized that the 9070XT card has high memory and hot spot temperatures, which is almost normal, with a few exceptions if you're lucky with the chips and the vendor.

At first glance, the Adrenaline software didn't seem very friendly compared to the Nvidia software. It was complex and confusing. Ultimately, I decided not to consider AMD for myself. After a while, I came across an XFX 9070XT card, and I fell in love with its design. It was sleek, stylish, and beautiful. After some thought, I decided to purchase it for testing purposes.

Before purchasing, I had doubts and concerns about temperatures, driver issues, and the performance of FSR in games.

So, I've been using the card for a month, and I'm ready to make an impression.

The drivers were installed without any problems. I removed the Nvidia driver using DDU and then installed the latest version of Adrenaline.

The first tests of the card showed that the VRAM chips are from Samsung and the temperatures are excellent in stock - Hotspot and VRAM are within 79-80 degrees at a total room temperature of 27-28 degrees. I slightly reduced the voltage (-10 and -70) and slightly adjusted the fan curve, after which the temperatures did not exceed 72 degrees for hotspot and vram, with the fan speed at around 40%. This is in an open case with the fans turned off.

The coil noise is minimal. It is significantly quieter than the 5080FE. And it is definitely much quieter than the 9070XT Master Aorus.

Games - I sometimes play Expedition 33, KDC2, God Of War, Diablo 4, The Witcher 3, and Cyberpunk 2077. In all of these games, I didn't notice any difference compared to the 5070ti or 5080. I used high settings, 4K resolution, and my FPS was within 100-120 (I have a 120 FPS limit, so I don't need more). I also have no complaints about the quality of FSR.

I studied and understood the Adrenaline software, and I began to better understand its structure. Over the course of a month, I encountered several errors related to driver response time. After researching the issue, I disabled updates in Win11, turned off error collection in Adrenaline, and the problem no longer occurred.

So - my opinion. Of all the cards I've used, the XFX 9070XT is my favorite today) She has the best design for me and the best value for money. This card cost me a little more than the 5070 Gigabyte Eagle, but its performance level is definitely not lower than the 5070TI. If we talk about the overall impression, and do not look at the FPS counter, then I did not feel any difference after switching to this card from my last 5080FE.

However, I think that this card, or rather the software from AMD, makes this card more demanding for the user. I would compare it and the cards from Nvidia, like an automatic transmission and a manual one. AMD is a manual one - it needs to be understood, felt, adjusted and constantly controlled. Nvidia - put and forget.

I also realized that a lot depends on the manufacturer and the vendor. Even the top-of-the-line Aorus Master was pretty bad, so I'm afraid to imagine what it's like with Asrock, where temperatures can reach 100 degrees. However, XFX is excellent.

Just pulled the trigger on a new PC and trying to set up the Adrenaline Tool but I'm quite overwhelmed by it's options. Right now I'm running Fluid Frames with Anti lag for every game but are there more or better set and forget settings for this?

I have recently been experiencing a driver timeout issue on my pc. I'm not entirely sure why and there's a few possible factors. I recently upgraded my CPU and Motherboard, the CPU is new and the board was bought used. It is a Asus TUF Gaming B550 plus. Initially I though the error could be related to pbo and my curve optimser I had to undervolt my cpu. After fully removing the undervolt and running my gpu at complete stock with a fresh install of drivers using DDU and fully reseating the GPU I still get the timeout error. It only ever happens when doing low intensity tasks such as browsing, discord calls and basic usage, It has never crashed or given me any issues under load or whilst playing. I even ran it through 3DMark Timespy, Steel Nomad, Heaven Benchmark and 30 mins of Furmark without one single error. I did repaste the GPU a couple months back and I've had it for around 4 months. I also messed around with overclocking the GPU for a bit, but im not very good with those things and I couldnt get it to run stable so I didnt use it after that at all and basically didnt game with any type of overclock ever. Even after the repaste, and overclocking I did not experience any of these issues before upgrading my board and cpu and installing the newest amd drivers. The temps are quite good and iv'e never really had an issue with them. My PSU is also a brand new CoolerMaster MWE 850W Gold and my motherboard bios is updated to the latest one. Im not entirely sure if this is an issue with my gpu hardware, my board or potentially a driver issue with the latest amd drivers. Any help would be largely appreciated. I will also upload a .dmp extract from one of the crashed I experienced.

PC SPECS :

* CPU: Ryzen 7 5700X
* GPU: Exact RX 6600 XT model (Sapphire Pulse, XFX SWFT, etc.)
* Motherboard: ASUS TUF Gaming B550-Plus
* RAM: 32gb 3200mhz cl16
* PSU: Cooler Master MWE 850W Gold
* Windows version (Windows 11 home)
* AMD Adrenalin version (26.6.4)

Bucket ID :
LKD_0x117_Tdr:3_TdrVTR:0_IMAGE_amdkmdag.sys-V-GRE=c860

.dmp Extract :

\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
\* \*
\* Bugcheck Analysis \*
\* \*
\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*

VIDEO_TDR_TIMEOUT_DETECTED (117)
The display driver failed to respond in timely fashion.
(This code can never be used for a real BugCheck; it is used to identify live dumps.)
Arguments:
Arg1: ffffd50b28df1010, Optional pointer to internal TDR recovery context (TDR_RECOVERY_CONTEXT).
Arg2: fffff806143cb6a0, The pointer into responsible device driver module (e.g. owner tag).
Arg3: 0000000000000000, The secondary driver specific bucketing key.
Arg4: ffffd50b1dd860c0, Optional internal context dependent data.

Debugging Details:
\------------------

Mini Kernel Dump does not contain unloaded driver list
Mini Kernel Dump does not contain unloaded driver list
Unable to load image amdkmdag.sys, Win32 error 0n2
\*\*\* WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for amdkmdag.sys

KEY_VALUES_STRING: 1

Key : Analysis.CPU.mSec
Value: 1468

Key : Analysis.Elapsed.mSec
Value: 2218

Key : Analysis.IO.Other.Mb
Value: 21

Key : Analysis.IO.Read.Mb
Value: 1

Key : Analysis.IO.Write.Mb
Value: 23

Key : Analysis.Init.CPU.mSec
Value: 765

Key : Analysis.Init.Elapsed.mSec
Value: 17747

Key : Analysis.Memory.CommitPeak.Mb
Value: 100

Key : Analysis.Version.DbgEng
Value: 10.0.29617.1000

Key : Analysis.Version.Description
Value: 10.2604.29.1 amd64fre

Key : Analysis.Version.Ext
Value: 1.2604.29.1

Key : Bugcheck.Code.LegacyAPI
Value: 0x117

Key : Bugcheck.Code.TargetModel
Value: 0x117

Key : Dump.Attributes.AsUlong
Value: 0x18

Key : Dump.Attributes.KernelGeneratedTriageDump
Value: 1

Key : Failure.Bucket
Value: LKD_0x117_IMAGE_amdkmdag.sys

Key : Failure.Exception.IP.Address
Value: 0xfffff806143cb6a0

Key : Failure.Exception.IP.Module
Value: amdkmdag

Key : Failure.Exception.IP.Offset
Value: 0x1eb6a0

Key : Failure.Hash
Value: {eb317d22-0fcb-4b7a-404e-a69301cad237}

Key : Faulting.IP.Type
Value: Paged

BUGCHECK_CODE: 117

BUGCHECK_P1: ffffd50b28df1010

BUGCHECK_P2: fffff806143cb6a0

BUGCHECK_P3: 0

BUGCHECK_P4: ffffd50b1dd860c0

FILE_IN_CAB: WATCHDOG-20260722-1954.dmp

DUMP_FILE_ATTRIBUTES: 0x18
Kernel Generated Triage Dump
Live Generated Dump

FAULTING_THREAD: ffffd50b21b97180

TAG_NOT_DEFINED_202b: \*\*\* Unknown TAG in analysis list 202b

VIDEO_TDR_CONTEXT: dt dxgkrnl!_TDR_RECOVERY_CONTEXT ffffd50b28df1010
Symbol dxgkrnl!_TDR_RECOVERY_CONTEXT not found.

PROCESS_OBJECT: ffffd50b1dd860c0

PROCESS_NAME: System

IP_IN_PAGED_CODE:
amdkmdag+1eb6a0
fffff806143cb6a0 ?? ???
STACK_TEXT:
ffffbc0286bfef40 fffff80673d06a59 : ffffd50b28df1010 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : nt!DbgkpWerCaptureLiveTriageDump+0x8e
ffffbc0286bff470 fffff806740a4e3a : 0000000000000000 00000000c0000099 fffff806740ecc50 00000000c0000099 : nt!DbgkpWerProcessPolicyResult+0x21
ffffbc0286bff4a0 fffff806740a4c39 : 0000000000000003 ffffbc0286bff680 fffff806143cb6a0 0000000000000000 : nt!DbgkWerCaptureLiveKernelDump2+0x1ea
ffffbc0286bff500 fffff80605918dff : 0000000000000057 ffff858267ab0b60 000000000002fa00 0000000000000001 : nt!DbgkWerCaptureLiveKernelDump+0x69
ffffbc0286bff580 fffff806056d5595 : ffffd50b28df1010 ffffd50b28df1010 ffffd50b28df1010 000000000002625a : dxgkrnl!TdrCollectDbgInfoStage1+0xe7f
ffffbc0286bff760 fffff806136132f0 : ffffbc0286bff849 01dd1a032d00cbdd 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : dxgkrnl!TdrIsRecoveryRequired+0x155
ffffbc0286bff790 fffff80613686a49 : 000000000000000e ffffd50b21ad3000 ffffd50b21ad3000 0000000000000001 : dxgmms2!VidSchiReportHwHang+0x658
ffffbc0286bff8b0 fffff806136e4d65 : 0000000000000001 0000000000000000 ffffd50bffffffff 0000000000045438 : dxgmms2!VidSchiCheckHwProgress+0x3e9
ffffbc0286bff940 fffff806135e758d : ffffd50b21ad3000 ffffd50b21ad3000 ffffbc0286bffab9 0000000000000000 : dxgmms2!VidSchiWaitForSchedulerEvents+0x385
ffffbc0286bffa10 fffff80613687332 : ffffd50b21ad3000 ffffd50b201cf7b0 ffffd50b252b8050 ffffd50b266e9010 : dxgmms2!VidSchiScheduleCommandToRun+0x46d
ffffbc0286bffb20 fffff80613675ddc : ffffd50b21ad3500 ffffd50b21ad3000 fffff80613675d00 ffffd50b21ad3000 : dxgmms2!VidSchiRun_PriorityTable+0x42
ffffbc0286bffb70 fffff80673a8212a : ffffd50b21b97180 fffff80600000001 0000000000000000 ffffe500de6ca180 : dxgmms2!VidSchiWorkerThread+0xdc
ffffbc0286bffbb0 fffff80673cacd94 : ffffe500de6ca180 ffffd50b21b97180 fffff80673a820d0 0000000000000000 : nt!PspSystemThreadStartup+0x5a
ffffbc0286bffc00 0000000000000000 : ffffbc0286c00000 ffffbc0286bf9000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : nt!KiStartSystemThread+0x34

SYMBOL_NAME: amdkmdag+1eb6a0

MODULE_NAME: amdkmdag

IMAGE_NAME: amdkmdag.sys

STACK_COMMAND: .process /r /p 0xffffd50b116aa040; .thread /r /p 0xffffd50b21b97180 ; kb

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: LKD_0x117_IMAGE_amdkmdag.sys

OSPLATFORM_TYPE: x64

OSNAME: Windows 10

FAILURE_ID_HASH: {eb317d22-0fcb-4b7a-404e-a69301cad237}

Followup: MachineOwner
\---------

I’ve been having some buyer’s remorse and wanted to hear your opinions.

My previous GPU was an RX 5700 XT, but it started having serious issues (gray screens, artifacts, crashes, and random reboots). So I genuinely needed to replace it.

I ended up buying a PowerColor RX 9060 XT Hellhound 16 GB for about US$570 (GPU prices are much higher here in Brazil due to taxes).
At the time, the RX 9070 XT would have cost me about US$250 more.

My current setup is:
Intel Core i5-9600K
32 GB DDR4 RAM
1440p 240 Hz monitor

I mostly play single-player games, but I also own a PS5, which is actually my main platform for most AAA releases.

Another important point is that I wasn’t planning to upgrade my CPU, motherboard, or RAM this year. My plan was to keep using the i5-9600K for a while longer and eventually move to an AM5 platform.

One of the reasons I chose the RX 9060 XT is that I was also interested in buying a PlayStation Portal. On top of that, the roughly US$250 I saved could later be put toward a new CPU and cover part of the cost of an AM5 motherboard.

After installing the RX 9060 XT, I noticed that in games like theHunter: Call of the Wild, some areas still drop to around 50 FPS. In other parts of the map, performance improved significantly compared to my RX 5700 XT, but in those heavier areas, the improvement was minimal.

From everything I’ve researched and discussed with other people, it seems that my i5-9600K is the bottleneck in those situations.

Even so, I can’t stop wondering if I should have spent the extra money and bought the RX 9070 XT, especially with long-term use in mind.

So, what do you think?
Considering my current hardware, was the RX 9060 XT the more sensible choice?
Or would you have spent the extra US$250 on the RX 9070 XT, even knowing I’d be keeping the i5-9600K for a while?

I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have been in a similar situation or have experience with these GPUs.

So recently, I've been doing a lot of stuffs to fix my valorant stutters and I noticed that when I tries to alt-tab, the cursor stutters too.

I tried disabling amd anti-lag and the issue was still there, the frame time was awful. So I come up with every guide on youtube and optimization, being end up reinstalling the windows.

Then I found some reddit post that mpo causes it. So tried disabling mpo but I didn't know that there is 2 ways to disable it, the first method I've done is for windows 11 24h2 or earlier.

Mine is the 25h2. So I searched up on AI and found out that, instead of going to this regedit "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Dwm" and making a DWORD-32

you actually go to this registry "Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers" and then making a DWORD-32 and named it as "DisableOverlays" and change the value to "1".

No more frametime spikes and stutters when alt-tabbing

Hope this one helps for those who have same issues as I have.

PC SPECS:

Ryzen 5 3600

Sapphire nitro+ rx 580 8gb

16GB T-force delta cl-16

MSI MAG A750GL - 750w

So I just got this 9070XT and man is it huge. It came in an Amazon box which has a crease on it. I noticed that the main box and the inner box has a crease. The anti static bag also has some tears which looks like the cause is the metal edges. I have never received a damaged box like this and I am afraid that it’ll mess up my GPU. I obviously spent a lot of money on this and I am not sure if I should return it or keep it.

Edit: The amazon box merely had a few layers of brown paper that didn’t really help.

I got a 9060 XT for $460 which was pretty much the best price I could find at the time. A few weeks later I seen Microcenter had a Powercolor 9070 GRE for $479. Seemed like a no brainer to return the 9060 XT and pay $20 for a lot more performance.

I see a lot of hate for the card pretty much everywhere. Maybe it's the 12GB VRAM. The next absolute cheapest 9070 is another $140 which I can't justify.

CPU: Ryzen 5 9600X

GPU: XFX Quicksilver RX 9070 XT

Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 AORUS ELITE AX ICE

RAM: Corsair Vengeance DDR5

SSD: WD Black SN7100 1TB

PSU: ASRock Steel Legend 850W ATX 3.1

AIO: Thermalright FW360 Ultra LCD

Case: Lian Li O11 Dynamic Mini V2

Fans: Thermalright C12CW-S RGB 120mm 3 Pack x2

So this is just a appreciation post for the regular RX 9070 and how cool it is tough still very powerful.

I just built a PC a week ago and being 37 years old with a family I felt that things like low temperatures and quiet fans are more important than maximum performance.

Therefore I picked the non-xt regular rx 9070 because I had heard good things about it.

And it is so good. Still powerful but runs so cool that the fans never need to work basically.

Playing Baldurs Gate 3 at maximum settings in 1440p with fps capped at 120 I get core temp of mid 50s and hotspot and memory never goes above 65 C.

Same for clair obscure on high settings with fsr on quality and fps capped at 90.

Like coming from a nvidia 1060 this performance is so insane to me and The computer is still so quiet and comfy to sit at.

Dream gpu for me.

The instant replay is turned on in settings, but nothing saves when I hit the hot keys during gameplay (Battlefield 6). The only way I can seem to get it to temporarily work is to go into my game audio settings and switch the microphone from "default" to the direct "microphone" setting or visa versa. Then jumping straight back into game, testing it, and it seems the replay only buffers from when I changed the mic settings.
However, this is a temp fix, as it stops working again sometime after, often after loading into a new round or map.

I found one thread from a few years ago, saying to change your mix quality settings in windows from DVD quality to CD quality. I tried it, but no cigar.

Anybody got an idea or fix for this, or just experiencing this as well?

Edit: Specs

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9700X
GPU: XFX 9070XT Swift
Mobo: B850 Aorus Elite Wifi7
RAM: 1x16Gb Crucial Pro DDR5 Overclocking 6000
Case: Lian-Li V100
Cooler: ID-COOLING Frozn A620 Pro SE ARGB
PSU: Cooler Master Elite Gold 1000

It keeps crashing while I am playing, idk I feel like all drivers havebeen bad for over a year now.. For reference my GPU is RX 7700 XT

The 9070 XT would stretch the budget a bit, is the better performance worth it at 4k?

I bought 9070xt gigabyte GAMING non oc version and it has HYNIX memory chips.

Any good soul willing to share their GAMING OC 9070xt stock PERFORMANCE bios?

I would like to flash it on mine gaming and compare performance with oc TDP range.

screen from my card

The only other time I ever attempted this was on my HIS HD 6870, but the screws were rusted in place, and i couldn't get them off. So that repasted failed right there. I think this time will be different.

I built my PC 2 months ago and initially everything was running smoothly.

Since a couple of days I occasionally do have issues when booting up the PC. I shut down Windows at night and when I want turn the computer on the next day my PC boots up but I don't have a signal on my monitor and the screen just stays black.

Booting into Windows seems to be OK since my keyboard lights up, the mouse LED is on and case fans and LEDs are on.

Since I don't have any video output I shut my computer down with the power button and after re-booting I end up in Windows with 720p resolution and an error message from the AMD Bug Report Tool telling me that a driver timeout has occurred.

The first time this happened I simply ran the AMD Adrenalin Driver setup and re-installed the driver and everything was good for a while.

The next few reboots were without issues until one day when I shut down Windows again at night time and then the same thing happened again the next morning.

This time I couldn't re-install the driver and the AMD Adrenalin installer gave an Error 207 telling me that Windows detected a potential issue with my graphics device. I opened the device manager and saw that the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT display adapter was disabled. I enabled it in the device manager and I could then successfully re-install the ADM Adrenalin software again.

This whole thing happened a handful times now and it is really inconsistent. The past two days I had no issues - the PC booted up fine when I turned it on in the morning until today when this shit happened again.

My rig:

Powercolor Reaper 9070 XT

Ryzen 7 9850X3D

MSI Pro X870E-P Wifi

Corsair 32GB DDR5 6000

Crucial T705 2TB SSD

Windows 11 26H2

I de-activated the iGPU in the BIOS because I'm reading everywhere that the iGPU may cause issues. Other than that I'm a bit lost - especially since I cannot reliably reproduce this issue - it just happens once in a while.

Changes

• Manual Add game manually now opens a searchable game picker when the selected executable is ambiguous or unmatched, instead of silently failing. Fixes God of War (2018) and other titles whose folder name is a prefix of multiple compatibility entries (#7), and adds a full-list fallback for games that work but are not auto-matched (#5).
• Verified install, detection, and add-on handling against OptiScaler 0.9.4 (FFX 2.3 SDK / FSR 4.1.1); the bundled-Fakenvapi log now recognizes fakenvapi.dll.
• Repurposed the FSR4 INT8 tab for RDNA2 and unofficial APUs. Since OptiScaler 0.9.4 auto-enables FSR 4.1.1 INT8 on RDNA3 desktop cards (Fsr4Update=auto) and RDNA4 uses native FSR4, the tab now shows GPU-generation-aware guidance, adds an Fsr4ForceEnableInt8 toggle, and warns before applying a redundant manual package.

Download: https://github.com/Wimukthi/OptiScalerInstaller/releases/tag/v1.1.7.0

Or update via the in app updater

Optiscaler hooked into FSR2 was working amazingly well until I tried to go back up north. Then I would get a freeze every time I got to a certain area. I’ve tried so many fixes and nothing seems to work. It was fine in all of the more southern areas but as soon as I cross the river north of Valentines and get up into the mountains it freezes. I tried going through DLSS and FSR, disabling async, lowering graphics settings and on and on. It’s most likely a DX12 issue. Optiscaler in this game doesn’t seem to work well with Vulkan. Problem is it looked so good with optiscaler I can’t go back to native. Not sure what to do. I’ve got a 9070xt so no worries on power. But if anyone has somehow got it to work please let me know.

As the title says, I'm struggling to find the ideal settings for Cyberpunk. I'd like to push the 9070XT as far as possible, ideally with some raytracing while maintaining a steady 60fps, but I'm feeling like I'm chasing my own tail switching back and forth between different compromises. I land on some good settings and then either hit a big frame drop or spot some ugly artifacting that I can't live with.

I'm curious what settings others are using to hit the sweet spot between best quality image and steady 60fps. Also, how are people's experiences with PinkStone or Ultra Plus with the 9070XT, especially on Bazzite?

Specs:

• Powercolor Hellhound 9070XT
• Ryzen 5 9600X
• 32GB DDR5 RAM
• I'm running Bazzite and have Optiscaler installed for access to FSR4

Hi everyone so this is my first PC build and I’m curious about the last bit of wiring, that being the psu that is rated at 1200w by be quite to my gpu and that 3 to 1 cable apparently I can run the wire from the psu straight to the gpu with no issue instead of using the 3 to 1 connecter it came with. Does anyone one here know or have ran the power came straight to their gpu?

Has anyone changed the thermal pads on an RX 7800 XT reference card from Sapphire? I want to know what thickness or brand works best.

A little backstory:
I bought my 7800 XT back in 2024 about 5 months after release, It's been a great card for 1440p gaming at 144 FPS for most games but 6 months ago I ran into a really weird issue where my PC would smoothly shut off after 2 hours of gaming.

I couldn’t figure out why until I realized my hotspot was probably the reason, At stock tuning it was reaching 110°C which led to thermal throttling and eventually shutting down to protect itself (at least I think so, because 110°C is definitely not healthy for the card but it still confuses me that it literally turns my entire pc off as if it lost power instantly) That's when I learned about PTM7950.

I researched it extensively and tried my best to find a teardown guide for my specific card with no success. However the 7900 XTX reference card teardown by Gamers Nexus was really helpful and identical to the 7800 XT from what I experienced. I applied the PTM and my hotspot went from 100°C–110°C down to anywhere between78°C-88°C, Unfortunately a new issue occurred with the VRAM temps.

Before I opened my card the VRAM was running chilly at 82°C max. Now on stock settings it can spike up to 100°C, but after undervolting and adjusting the fan curve it sits consistently around 92°C–94°C.

I recognize this probably happened because the thermal pads on the VRAM got moved or stretched when I separated the PCB from the heatsink, even though I tried my best to keep them looking normal and they looked okay to me. (Sorry I have no pictures because I was streaming the teardown on Discord and the footage is really low res.)

Memory manufacturers do say GDDR6 is expected to run between 0°C and 95°C, but it's still frustrating that I went from great memory temps with a dangerous hotspot to a great hotspot with mediocre memory temps. Feels like I killed a snake only to end up with a scorpion.

I'm considering buying the Arctic TP-3 (1.5mm) and applying it, but online it seems that it needs to be 1.20mm when screwed down? Arctic says their pads can compress slightly but it still bugs me because I can't be sure they'll shrink down to 1.20mm. Once I remove the factory pads I'm stuck if the fit isn't near-perfect.

It’s really making me question whether I should just accept the new memory temps for the next 2.5 years of using this card, or if I should take a minor risk and try the thermal pads by Arctic, i did think of buying two size (1.0mm and 1.5mm) but money and time are not on my side currently (im outside of NA so shipping costs add 2 to 3 times the price of the pad itself).

I did consider thermal putty but trying to guess how much to apply to each VRAM chip introduces a whole separate kind of guesswork so its not that different from getting thermal pads.

Sorry for the long post, it’s just something I'm struggling with and wanted people’s opinions or experiences to help me out.

TL;DR: Repasted my Sapphire RX 7800 XT reference card with PTM7950 to fix a 110°C core hotspot (now down to ~88°C). However, stretching the stock VRAM pads during teardown pushed VRAM temps from 82°C up to 92°C–94°C (and up to 100°C on stock fans). Should I leave it alone for the next 2–3 years, or risk swapping to 1.5mm Arctic TP-3 pads when I'm unsure of the exact pad thickness required?

So my AMD software has been working perfectly up until I plugged in my Fifine AM8 microphone. It connects to a USB port on my rear IO and my earphones are plugged into it. Before, everything was plugged into the audio jacks but after plugging in the microphone, nothing is being captured now. Audio from anything in game or my microphone. Any recommendations?