Sorry if this post is a bit long, but I really want to include everything that I have tried so far in as much detail as possible.
 
So this is a bit of an odd issue which I have spent about 5 hours so far trying to debug and troubleshoot. I finally received my 2080 Ti XC yesterday, and almost immediately after setting it up and firing up a stress test, one of the fans on the card ramped all the way up to 100% speed and gets stuck there, even after the load on the card stops. When I boot into windows, the fans are both off since there is no load on the card, and they remain off until I fire up anything that would cause them to spin under normal conditions. The moment that happens, the fan on the VRM side of the card goes straight to 100% speed, and stays there indefinitely even after the load has ended. Rebooting windows gets the fan to stop spinning, but the issue happens all over again as soon I put a load on the card again. This does not seem to be a temperature issue. The card is sitting comfortably at ~30C at idle, and ~65C under load. Also manually setting the fan speed in PrecisionX1 works fine for the first fan, but as soon as I set it to anything that isn't 0% for the second fan, it instantly ramps up to 100% and gets stuck.
 
Interestingly, the fan speed is not shown properly in any monitoring software I try (tried GPU-Z, PrecisionX1, MSI Afterburner). The percentage speed displays the signal being sent to the fan, but the fan speed readback always reads as 0 RPM. Again, this is only one the VRM fan. The other fan reads the RPM perfectly fine.
 
So far, I have tried:

• Reinstalling the graphics drivers.
• Installing older graphics drivers.
• Reinstalling and completely uninstalling PrecisionX1 and Afterburner.
• Resetting all graphics drivers with DDU.
• Reseating the card in the PCI-e slot and swapping the power cables around several times.
• Flashing the GPU BIOS (to the same version it currently had - 90.02.17.00.8B). I wanted to try an older BIOS, but I didn't have time.

 
I have also inspected the GPU to try and see if there is any visually loose fan header, but I can't see much without removing the GPU cooler. Most of these troubleshooting steps had no effect, but some of them have told me some interesting things. For one, one of the times I uninstalled the graphics drivers, I didn't reboot windows, and so the fan was still stuck at 100% during the reinstall. Mid-way through, the fan started to slowly ramp down to 0% speed over the course of about 60 seconds, which tells me that the fan is receiving a PWM signal, since it did not just stop and spin down under its own momentum, rather it seemed to slowly ramp down in a controlled manor. To me this points more towards a software issue.
 
The most interesting change was when I flashed the BIOS. This seemed to temporarily change the behaviour of the fan. At first it started erratically revving up and down, and the speed readback in GPU-Z was jumping back and forth between 0 RPM and a seemingly correct reading, as if it somehow kept loosing connection to the tachometer in the fan. Before it was just always a constant 0 RPM reading. This seems strange to me, since the symptoms look like a hardware problem, but it seemed to change its behaviour when making software changes. After several minutes the erratic revving up and down stopped and it just went back to being a constant 100% speed again.
 
I am quite stumped on this issue... The only thing I haven't done yet is open up the card to get a better look at the fan headers. I am prepared to do that, as long as I can still RMA it if the issue cannot be solved. I am really really hoping to not have to RMA it though.
 
Any help or suggestions is much appreciated :)
 
Update:
 
Further debugging steps I have tried include

• Running the MCU tool, suggested by @EVGATech_BrandonO
• Doing a complete power flush, suggested by @Cool GTX
• Setting up an entire test system out of old PC hardware and trying the GPU on there.
• Installing the oldest nvidia driver for the 2080 Ti (416.16)
• Flashing the oldest BIOS to the card (90.02.0B.00.75)

Something I noticed on the test system, since the motherboard was lying flat on the desk and the GPU fans were facing me, is that while installing the graphics drivers, the fans seemed to be both spinning normally and quietly, at a low RPM. So I think this mostly confirms the idea that this is entirely a software related issue... but I have done everything that I can think of to mitigate any software bugs (flashing BIOS, reinstalling drivers, nuking drivers entirely with DDU and running the MCU tool) ...I can't possibly think of anything else to try :(
 
 Update 2:
 
The last thing I tried was running the card on Linux (Ubuntu 18.04). Was a bit of a pain to get the NVIDIA drivers to work, and it was all just to confirm that the card is still broken on Linux. At least this ruled out Windows as somehow being the cause. The issue is without a doubt with the card itself.
 
I have submitted an RMA. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do to fix the card. Hopefully this thread will be able to help someone else with a similar issue though.

EVGATech_BrandonO
Hello,
 
Try running this MCU update to see if that helps your issue: .

Hi Brandon, thanks for the suggestion. Looks promising. I will try this and be able to get back to you in ~3 hours from now when I am home from work.
 
Any software based solutions are of course preferable, but if it comes to it, I am prepared to open the card up and take a look. I have been thinking about trying to power the fans directly via a motherboard fan header, but it seems that the reference PCB has a weird 14-pin fan header, and I have no idea what the pinout on it looks like. Would it be possible / safe (in terms of warranty) to try and do this?

you seem to be having proper assistance here. good luck, hope all gets solved without rma.

EVGATech_BrandonO
Try running this MCU update to see if that helps your issue: .

So unfortunately running the MCU tool did not seem to fix the issue. I am currently in the process of throwing together some old PC parts I have lying around to see if the issue persists on an entirely fresh windows install, on entirely different hardware. If it does, I can be pretty certain that the issue is with the card and not with any external software or with my windows install. Unfortunately I feel like the issue will persist on the test rig, but I want to confirm this.

bad luck, hang in there mate

Nazarus
I apologize if I missed it somewhere in here, but does this happen upon bootup?  I mean does it start when the computer is powered on?  Or is it starting to rev up when it's loaded into Windows?

No, the fans are both off, as they should be, when powering on or logging into windows. Fan 1 behaves normally, but fan 2 spins straight up to 100% speed if it ever receives a signal to spin up at all...
 
So anything that would cause the fan to spin, like playing a game, running a stress test, or even just setting the speed manually with Afterburner or PrecisionX1 is what causes it to jump to 100% speed. It then stays there indefinitely until I restart windows. Setting the speed manually to 0% in PX1 or Afterburner does not fix it.

hi, did you fix the issue?, I seem to be having exactly the same issues and tried all of the steps you did, the problem also started with the fans spinning at 100% for a couple of minutes then fixing itself after a period of time, also I noticed that when it "fixed" itself, the sensor would show a curve going from 0% to a 100% in one millisecond and then slowlly lowering down just like when you install the drivers. is there anything else you did or will I have to RMA?. My card is a 1080ti sc black edition BTW

Before I start, I should state that I have a NVIDIA 2080ti Founders Edition, and I don't know much about GPUs, but I'm hoping this works for other GPU brands, so my post can help someone... Anyway, I think I found a TEMPORARY solution to this problem that seems to work most of the time... Its not great, but it will get the fans acting like normal for as long as you don't run any "games" (more on that at the end). I guess it was divine luck that I was able to figure this out, but here are the tools you will need to get this to work.
 
MSI Afterburner -
 
Novabench Benchmark -
 
So after you download both of these apps, you need to open MSI Afterburner, click on the settings cog, once in the "MSI Afterburner Properties", click on the heading labeled "Fan", once you are in the fan control area make sure to click the "Use Firmware Control Mode". Once there is a check-mark in the box next to that setting, click "Apply" at the bottom of the settings pane.
 
Now that you have "Use Firmware Control Mode" checked, open Novabench (other benchmark apps might work, idk, I do know that this works for me) and at the top of the app click tests, and then hover over "Individual Tests" and click "GPU Tests". The GPU test should start and you should see some sort of 3D render, and if the fans turn off while the animation is playing or IMMEDIATELY after it ends, that means the "fix" worked...
 
Now onto the issues this so-called "fix" has... This fix works best for me right when I turn on my PC for the first time that day, in other words, after I turn it off, sleep, go to work, then get home. I struggled to figure out if this works on a PC that has been running for already, but I think I got it to work for me, so hopefully it'll work for you as well. If it doesn't work right away, uncheck "Use Firmware Control Mode" hit apply re-check the box, hit apply again, then try the test again. This "fix" will stay active as long as you don't use a major percentage of your GPU, I've had my computer on for hours, with Google/Firefox open to watch YouTube, Netflix, or do work, and my GPU fans stayed normal until I turned off my PC. Also if you do want to game then this fix will be really weird, your fans might seem normal while you are playing the game, but after you close it the fan might kick back on...
 
Again, this is a VERY temporary fix, but if you want a quick and easy band-aid type solution, this should work.