So here is the deal.
 
About a week or so ago my EVGA 1070 SC edition w/ back plate burned out.  Terrible mechanical burning smell and my PC totally shut down and would not reboot. After a little poking around, I decided to put in my old r9 280x and with that my PC is working just fine, I ultimately determined it was my EVGA card that died.
 
I sent it in for RMA which they received on 10/28/16.
 
After that point, someone sent me a link on twitter to an article and picture of VRM burnt on the back of a PCB.
 
Unfortunately before I sent my card off for RMA I was unaware of this problem and did not think to look under the back plate or take a picture to verify.
 
My next step was to both come to this forum to see if it was a general problem (which it certainly seems to be) and to contact EVGA for a full refund.
 
Although the Tech support guy I talked to was very nice, and seemed to basically admit to their being problems on their end, the Moderators and Tech Support on this forum are totally out of touch with what is happening and generally misleading, lying, or otherwise just trying to cover up this whole situation.
 
DO NOT listen to them. YES THERE IS A PROBLEM.  Protect yourself now.  I personally will not trust the same model to go back in my PC with the Thermal Pad mod or not.  Therefore, while my card is in with them anyway I am demanding a full refund of my purchase price. 
 
The thermal pads should not be considered optional.  You are essentially dealing with a ticking time bomb.  Everything I am reading here from these people is just purely irresponsible and shameful.
 
I used to have the utmost faith in EVGA, but this whole forum, and EVGA's own obviously biased article has completely soured my opinion on them, and I will never be doing business with them again.
 
Thank you for listening and please take action ASAP.  For those afraid to do the procedure yourself I suggest sending in your card or returning it as soon as you can.
 
I have uploaded a picture of my PC pre burn out.  You can see I have plenty of ventilation, large case and great cable management.  4 x 120 mm intake fans, 3 x 120 mm exhaust.

Not surprised at all. I think a recall should have been done personally. Problem is. They sold to many and it would cost them an arm and a leg. Big EVGA fan myself. But yeah. This is a big screw up. Asking customers that are not technically inclined to rip off coolers on their brand new expensive cards to put pads on? Especially at the risk of damage and then warranty void? No thanks. EVGA needs to take the loss and learn from this. To maintain the top notch customer service and retain customers in the future. Because like you. If this happened to me. I would look some where else for a video card purchase. Customer service or not. Sorry to hear this happened to you. I hope EVGA does right and honors the request for a full refund. 

So for, all I see are a few cases scattered around the internet...being conflated with the issue of the VRM/Memory running hotter than other models.

Isolated cases aren't enough for a recall.

I have only looked at a few forums and a few tech sites and so far a few seems a little conservative....If it is only a few then this issue will just fade away, no?
 
 

The door swings both ways tho and we only see the few who could be bothered posting their experience. What about the majority who simply fill out the RMA form and send it off or return it to the retailer.
 
Without any official numbers (which no one ever see's) no one will know the full extent of the issue. Could be big, could be small. It was enough to warrant EVGA to add an additional thermal pads to the cooler of all new cards rolling off the production line.

BF3PRO
Isolated cases aren't enough for a recall.

 
Not isolated if they are all missing pads? I mean its not a matter if. Its when is it going to happen? Know what I mean? I would imagine EVGA has already corrected this with newer stock being made as we speak to include them. 

I think EVGA could have handled this situation better with independent testing. EVGA have been quite vague in their responses and the only real results we've seen are the those after the pad has been applied. Other than that just a statement saying we tested it in a hotter environment and it was within specs. Within specs by what, 1c, 2c? What are we talking about here, what tests did they run, how long was it run for, was this on a test bench setup or a closed case which most people use? You see what I'm getting at in regards to being vague. I'm in no way saying EVGA's tests could have been biased, but it's very hard to disprove something when the information given contains well... no real information.
 
If they done independent testing and the results came back the same (it was within specs) but still offered the thermal pads for customers, than EVGA would be be receiving nothing but praise. Instead there's speculation and misinformation floating about all over the web and ultimately in my opinion damaging EVGA's already awesome reputation.
 
Hell, even if they released their own in house tests results with details it would have been better than anything they've said so far.
 
If what EVGA are saying is correct and within specs after testing, there was potential to turn this negative into a HUGE positive for EVGA. But unfortunately I can't help to feel this was handled all wrong.

Completely agree with OP.  This is not acceptable at all.  People should not be rolling dice at all with the rest of their components simply because evga doesn't want to take a small dip in profits. 
 
I'm betting evga will continue to deny the fact that their FTW line and others are a disaster and failed product due to rushing the 10 series out and completely overlooking the VRM.  I'd like to know if there is a single other vendor who like evga, didn't cover the VRM for 1070/80.  Instead of making customers fill your shortcoming, just admit it's a failure and do a recall.  But I'm betting that won't happen.
 
I'll probably be submitting a RMA soon as I've been having numerous issues involving 3d accelerated applications such as Madvr and World of Tanks.  Been getting BSODs relating to nvidia drivers and complete and instant shut downs when playing games(Not even OC'ed at all).  This only happened as soon as I installed the 1070 FTW.  For a top end card, this is sad, I've never had such a bad experience with evga all the way back to the geforce FX series but this may be the nail in the coffin for me with evga if they do not follow up properly.  If I had the chance to just return it to Newegg, I would have done that in an instant if I knew all evga would do is a band-aid solution.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GeForce_GTX_1080_GameRock/4.html
 
Even palit managed to do the vrm cooling right