system
A chat on subreddit /r/pcmasterrace
human
could be both, really. A bad contact could also come from a bad design, maybe a part is higher than it was meant to be and stops the cooler from completely touching? hard to say.

Still, I'd take an overheating GPU that thermal throttles itself over a GPU with a melting power connector..
gpt
To me it sounds more like a Quality control issue, because not every 7900 XTX is affected, only a small percentage.

If every GPU was affected, then there would definetely be something wrong with the cooler design.