Anybody regardless of knowledge, talent or experience can make a video. Putting it mildly, sites like Gamersnexus and JayzTwoCents are sites I'd only visit for "entertainment purposes". After all, how much trust can ya put in a guy who drills 4 holes thru an expensive X99 MoBo and thinks going in "what could happen ?" I find it "interesting" that the same guy who is saying "This VRM thing isn't a problem is the the same guy who posted a video of the repair process.
In this video, he describes as the thermal pad as the "recommended or required approach" to resolving the VRM thermal problems. Also says they've done a lot of them ... so if it's not a problem, ya have to wonder, why are they doing a lot of them and calling it the "required or recommended" solution ?
He also says "Still hitting 114C is really hitting a fine line for conditions that could trip a runaway thermal scenario especially since the backplate is effectively acting as a hotbox before applying thermal pads." If one tries to kill a card and can't, it's not a unknown fact that the quality, performance of all electronic components are variable. If they weren't we'd all have 5.0 Ghz overclocks on our CPUs. The 2% that can do that because they can reach that clock at lower voltages than most others and therefore they operate at lower temps which fall in the "acceptable" range.
Let's also remember that:
a) GN acknowledge 114C VRM temps which is a place no one should want to go. When they claim that because the VRMs are rated at 115C, 114C is OK.... does that mean running our CPUs at 99C is OK too ?
b) High VRM temps also limits the stability of card OCs
c) EVGA has a long history of "cheaping out" on the SC series where VRM and memory cooling is concerned. Historically, EVGA has used just a plain stock VRM / PCB with no additional cooling ... only the changed cooler allows it to be considered as an AIB card. On rare occasions they have made slight changes. I recall once that they swapped brands but used a competing VRM or comparable cost / quality and same number of phases. For the 970, they added 1 extra phase where their competitors all had more. Their SC line memory and VRM cooling has always been lacking compared to comparable cards from Gigabyte, MSI and Asus and it shows up in what the card can deliver overclocking wise. If you go back and look at forum posts from the 5xx era, you will see many, many posts from fried VRMs on the 570 SC as well as other cards with stock VRMs. The stock VRM was simply undersized and undercooled like most reference cards even today. And on the 970 SC, 1/3 of the heat sink actually missed the GPU. The FTW line was essentially the SC with better VRM and better memory / VRM cooling ... but with 10xx, the SC and FTW solutions are the same in this respect.
And if you watch that GN thermal imaging video, he puts up the picture on the cards for which EVGA is supplying thermal pad solutions....the 1060 is now included. We see this on the forums, we see this in youtube reviews ... when these things occur, someone always responds "Well I have that card and it's still working so the problem is imaginary." Not everyone has a chip from the same wafer, the same ambient, the same case / cooling solution, the same OC, the same loads. What percentage of cards must fail before it is accepted as a problem ?
The last FTW we had could not run at the factory OC. That FTW demanded a nice price premium and GPU temps were fine ... the most logical culprit therefore would be the VRM. After 18 months, 20 support calls and 5 RMAs we finally had something that worked at advertised speeds... but it was a next generation card that they substituted.
Anyway, getting back to the OPs problem .... these are the 1060 cards affected having the following part numbers.
03G-P4-6365
03G-P4-6167
03G-P4-6165
http://www.evga.com/thermalmod/
If you have this card, once this mod is done, should take about an hour, the card will be fine and perform comparable to other cards in its price range, If you find the process daunting, you can send back to EVGA and they will do it for you. If willing to brave it this guide's you thru ... was posted above, but for your convenience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdn5r___1Iw
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram