Despoiler:
I do not usually get any "problems" related to a thermal problem with a card till little later when the crap they use thin out, and wonky crap starts going on with the pc. But in almost ALL cases I have come in with my own or others, I have seen about 80-90% of them all, no matter the brand, had poor, improperly installed, or in my case almost none. It was just a gremlin for month, doing all kinds of wacky stuff, and though my fans hardy were on, and even with my temp gun saying it was cold, it really came down in one of my tests after redoing all my stuff with my don, and retesting with Valley, that right around the 2-3rd time I was testing it to watch my temps, and look for graphical or temp problem, in the 3rd test, it reported my GPU running at 500+ Degrees!!! HOLY CRAP! I then told my son something is up, did I ever take it apart before or ever since I got it, and that was a no, so I have him pull down my floating case from the bottom of my desk, pulled and popped it sticker cherry, and above is what I saw. I have replaced the paste, or lack thereof, and since making this thread, have yet to have any more problems at all, and things are running smoother.
So honestly I would not wait, for way back when I was a kid, companies used to do stuff to stuff when they made them to have a dedicated "failure" rate, so that they would know from the time of purchase, when their failure rate may kick in, and get sales in parts for the products. Now I wonder why a company, SAY XFX, would put enough paste AROUND the chip, so when you get your flashlight out, and look between the hs and pcb, would see GLOBS of paste all over, till you remove it, and its all over BUT the chip, and had they not put more on mine, would of had a failure rate after the warranty due to excessive heat, seeing the globs of paste around the chip, till I started seeing those cool trippy colors letting you know the gpu cannot take no more of which, it would of been too late. I will not have that problem at all not more, but in doing so, seeing all that glop all around the chip but on the chip, using some cheap cheap cheap crap for what was on the chip was like grey water, nothing like what was around it, so that tells me this gpu die got REALLY hot, making that paste into water, sooner then expected, but I have not even owned this card a year, I DID not think it was the card at all, though it was other stuff, including software, but I should of listened to myself, or maybe I had no time and told my son to just slap it in there, but the 10-15 min it would of taken to look at it day one, would not of had me for the last month and a half-2 months trying to figure out the crap that was all going on for it was soooo damn weird the way things were acting, and sometimes not acting, but I am prefect now, and I highly recommend checking out the failure rate between the metal before its too late.
OH and I have to mention that between my 5700 and my other 6700 XFX has the most sexy cards I have seen in a VERY long time! BUT WHY is quality control so crappy, and not just with them.