I have done a lot of searching on the internet and it seems this is more common with 3090 cards, and when it happens, the mem3 temp sensor also reads 125c. Everything is pointing to Hybrid cooler or water block installs.
I had this 3080 blocked with an EK Velocity block (Yes, with the revised stand offs) all of it's life, 2 weeks after I originally received it. Prior to blocking the card, I ran it with the original air cooler for those two weeks while waiting for the EK block to arrive. I guess that I didn't notice the 125c issue in Precision or HWINFO since all of the other temps were fine the last year and a half that I have had it on water. No issues with performance or anything, and it still performs just fine.
Now that I have the original air cooler installed on the card, and it is being put to use in a second system, the fan closest to the rear is at 100%, and noisy. Firmware updates do not fix the issue, with the exception of a temporary fix when applying the Hybrid BIOS, but once the computer is shut down and turned back on, the fan speed issue comes back. Precision does not find any firmware updates, and the MCU update tool has no effect. There was one post I found mentioning a driver issue causing it, but I doubt this.
Is it possible that EVGA could do a repair on my card instead of replacing it? I really don't want to get stuck with a ex-mining card when the only thing wrong with this one is a sensor being misread and causing fans to ramp up.