Hi all,
After only a few weeks, but what has felt like an eternity, yesterday, both my thermal pads and RMA arrived! I assume everyone in the UK is now getting the pads as there were some threads about it yesterday.
Anyway, at odds with the experience user 'Hapkiman' had regarding being sent a non functional second hand card, I can confirm a brand new 1070 FTW was sent to me yesterday!
Great going EVGA, keep this up and restore faith to people that they are getting BNIB RMAs to replace their brand new cards.
The card had the update to BIOS (72) and thermal pad mod. It runs about 10°C cooler than my first one, which means where I was at 77°C in one game at 66% fan ~2100rpm (typhoon sound levels, just check the toms hardware reviews) I am now at 67°C which is approx. 40% fan and ~1300rpm (this is left as standard in the BIOS mod)
Sound level differences are night and day, lower load temps mean rather than stuck at 1898mhz I now see up to 1950mhz, temp dependent of course. Its not heating up my H100i so the fan speeds on that have dropped, everything is like it was with my old reference 980!
Great news. VRAM looked to be in contact with the pads, thermal mod VRM pads were thick enough you could see an ever so slight bulge between midplate, pcb and backplate so know good contact being made there.
oh, and it idles at 28°C (20°C ambient)
