Called EVGA presales and spoke to a rep. I basically asked them "If I purchase a 1070 FTW directly from your website over this next weekend, can I be guaranteed that I will have a thermal pad pre-installed in the GPU?"
Response "Well the 3.0 acxs are running according to spec, and the furmark software used for the testing is what caused the burnout in the card. You may request a thermal pad along with your purchase for installation"
My response "Okay, but I'm a new PC builder, and don't want to open up my $450 GPU that I just purchased, so what your saying is that they will not come pre-installed when I purchase it directly from your website?"
Rep Response "All the cards should come pre-installed with the thermal pads within the next 1-2 weeks."
Anyways...this was the conversation. My plan and anyone that's in my same situation who have just bought a 10 series in the last week or two and just now started learning about the issue. The retailer I purchased from has a 30 day gpu return policy. I'm going to hold on to it for another 2 1/2 weeks and call EVGA back and see if they are ALL shipping with thermal pads. If so, I'll return my product to the retailer and purchase directly from EVGA. That is, if I don't decide to go with the Asus strix within the next 2 weeks. Last night, I was about to return my EVGA 1070 and just purchade the strix. For being a first time of builder, and wantibg quality parts from a dependable manufacturer, and not getting it is just demoralizing. I know things happen, but come on...they are $400+ GPUs.