specialservice
I bit the bullet bought a 1080FTW in spite of all the reported problems and an EK FTW waterblock. Tested the card for 4 days BF4, Folding, Overwatch etc. absolutely no issues. Slapped on the waterblock today (kept the stock backplate, not difficult) and cranked it up to +152 Gpu +150 Mem. (130% power target) resulting in 2151 @ 42 deg. c. As usual the quality of the EK block is great, however the stock cooler had a few scratches on the GPU contact surface I haven't seen that before.
Whelp... I finally did the same. I followed your lead and I just bought the 1080FTW and an EK FTW waterblock and nickel backplate as well. After 4 months of waiting, I finally gave up since there have been zero updates on a card that we hardly believe even exists at this point. Newegg will be shipping my FTW card out today to hopefully be received by the weekend, and then Performance-PC's is shipping my waterblock to be here late next week (side note: Why does Performance-PC not have better shipping options to California... come on with that $18 minimum shipping cost).
I hope I can see similar results as you did once everything is connected to the loop. Here's to a free copy of Gears of War 4 too