Heatpipes are essentially vapor chambers.
I know they operate on the same principle, but that's not my point. The point of a vapor chamber is to efficiently remove heat from all parts of the die and transfer it to the next element in the cooling solution. Wheres, unless you use direct-touch heatpipes, their job is only to move heat from the base into the fins.
To be honest, I thought high-end Nvidia RTX Founders' Edition cards had both a vapor chamber
and heat pipes, but I'm having trouble finding a good pic of the heatsink. I know their top-end cards use vapor chambers for many generations, now.
Anyway, the question still stands - can a solid block of metal transfer heat efficiently enough into those heatpipes, or is it a potential bottleneck?