xHalloweenx

Those temps are actually fine for a 5700XT. My card personally runs around 90C edge and 110C Junction stock and around 80C and 100C with a custom fan curve. As long as your Junction is at or below 115C you are within AMD's Temperature spec. The higher readouts are actually just because of the way AMD is actually reading die temps now, with Junction being the single hottest area. Where as in the past it was only read off an edge temp, much like NVidias current cards and AMD's older cards were.

Those temps are actually fine for a 5700XT. My card personally runs around 90C edge and 110C Junction stock and around 80C and 100C with a custom fan curve. As long as your Junction is at or below 115C you are within AMD's Temperature spec. The higher readouts are actually just because of the way AMD is actually reading die temps now, with Junction being the single hottest area. Where as in the past it was only read off an edge temp, much like NVidias current cards and AMD's older cards were.

Have you tried uping the voltage on your CPU and RAM to check for instability, or booting with 1 ram stick at a time?

Linux is a great alternative. Gaming on linux has never been easier, I am a Arch Linux user. However if you want to play the latest releases or play anything with a anti-cheat software or a intrusive DRM scheme, linux is still at minimum a year out if not longer. For the best gaming experience, Windows 10 is your only option. Windows 10 in a KVM with GPU passthrough is a option, but you will need a second dedicated GPU for either Linux or your Windows VM, and you do lose some of your cpu's resources which could affect your gaming performance depending on the title. Windows 7 and Windows 8 keys do still active Windows 10, but I believe only from a clean install, I could be wrong here. As far as Windows 10 vs 8.1 they honestly collect about the same amount of data. You could limit the data or eliminate it by blocking access via a firewall, preferably at a network/router level.