From my point of view 85 to 88C is fine while gaming.
 
My GTX 1080 did about the same....had to sell for other reasons..but it was fine for the time I had it (since release, really)

It's a phanteks Evolv ATX Tempered Glass case. I even took the entire front panel off to allow maximum airflow and temps didn't change.
 
Two 140mms are intake, and 1 140mm as exhaust + 240mm radiator as exhaust.

At that temp. it's thermal throttling (won't hurt anything, but undesirable)..I would put fresh TIM on the GPU as suggested above and roll from there..Something decent like MX-4..Easy and cheap to do.

That Zotac has a dual fan cooling system and in my opinion it shouldn't be that high. That temp is what I expect from a Founder's Edition GTX 1080 (Native NVIDIA reference). Make sure BOTH fans are rotating.
 
Take your side cover off and use a common house fan (or borrow one). Let it blow cool air directly into the chassis and monitor the temps.

Ok, BEFORE I change the thermal compound, do you think this would be the culprit? I've been running more tests with the power limit at 100% and it seems like the temps stay below 83C now.
 
I just found out that the power limit is way higher than any other card on the market. Would that be the cause of higher temps? If so, that makes perfects sense that it is the power not the cooler.
 
https://www.reddit.com/r/...0_amp_overheating_fix/

Ok. Going to test superposition at 5k resolution and see what the temps are with the power limit at 100%.

I had an MSI Armor 1080 and it would regularly hit 86c while gaming. It had the chinziest dual fan cooler I'd ever seen on a modern. The only copper was a thin layer as the GPU contact, the rest was a meager amount of aluminum.

Ok I've made up my mind. I'm going to get a https://www.nzxt.com/products/kraken-g12-black 
 
And a 240mm rad probably. We'll see.

85%-90% fan speed and still seeing mid 80's? something has to be wrong. I'd expect those temps in an SLI setup, but even then! 90% fan speed should more than keep a single 1080 below 80C you would think. Just as reference, even though they re not the same card(s) my 980 Ti's which should be running warmer then a single 1080 any day, never really get above 74C during heavy loads, in my 22C office at about 70% fan speed.

So I got to report back, probably the worst of the worst happened to me. I think either me or the G12 semi damaged my card.
 
So, i put on the g12 bracket and x52 last week, well starting a few days after that, i started getting pretty big microstutters whenever i use DSR or 8xMSAA. I tried loosening the bracket, increasing fan RPMs etc etc. but i would still get these microstutters.

Now i have the stock cooler back on and i still am getting these microstutters, but it's only under extremely weird behaviour: Microstuttering only happens with 5k DSR or 8xMSAA on, on fullscreen mode. I'm so confused.
 
I should also point out, that the microstutters were way worse with the g12 bracket installed. Now with the stock cooler back on, the microstutters, while still there, are far less frequent.
 
So I have no idea whether it's a hardware bug or a driver bug or both.

Not that high probably 30% CPU usage since i have a 1700X.
 
But these are for games that aren't that demanding, not more demanding than portal 2 (oh and FYI it happens in that game too sometimes).
 
But, i've also found it only happens in full screen mode. These microstutters happen a couple times every 2 minutes or thereabouts.

Again, i'm doing it on games that are very low demanding or are old. and i don't run 8xmsaa and 5k dsr at the same time.
 
But I do get your point and agree. Though, the micro stutters were way worse with the kraken g12 on, than with the stock cooler so idk.

Glad to hear you got it figured out and that the card was good afterall...

Sounds good...  I'm getting ready to DL and install that new driver as well.

joeymir
Yay super glad you got everything all squared away! So how are your overall load temps now?

I haven't done any 5k testing. But at 1440P, max temps i see no matter what are 80C, but typically it floats around 75C which is a lot better than before where it always sat at 79C or higher. Which is awesome because my goal was to have temps below 80C and not go above it (yeah it does touch 80C but whatever it's 1C).
 
Still, never going to recommend anybody buying this card unless your a miner. The cooler on this thing should only pass as a GTX 1070 or gtx 1060 cooler, especially when the PCB can push a freaking 375W power limit. Though, not complaining, getting a gtx 1080 for free is amazing! haha.
 
I do miss EVGA A LOT though. My first graphics card was a 750 TI FTW, and I miss the quality of that card (the thing overclocked like crazy, got 1430mhz on the core). My next card was a gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming (cause EVGA didn't have 1060s out at that time), and while it is a high quality card, one of the fans started making a buzzing noise, so I RMAed the card...i got the 1060 returned with the fan fixed, but the front got all these scratches and i could see that whoever worked on the card bent the backplate and PCB a little bit, was really mad when that happened. Now my 3rd card is the one this topic is about. :D

Safe to say EVGA, my next card in about 3-4 years is going to be from you guys. With my 750 Ti FTW, I had NO issues at all, temps were freaking fantastic and no weird noises.