AHowes
Yea it's a big job with a ton of screws to remove the cooler. You can leave the backplate on but you also have 4 tiny screws on the i/o plate.

You want to take your time with it and don't slip!

Any chance you have a guide or manual. I did look at the FTW3 kit manual but that has taking backplate out for step 1 so just skip that part I guess?
 I did do it with other brands before, but EVGA cards are known to be over engineered so rather be safe than sorry.
 
Will probably call the German office tomorrow anyway see if they got any feedback.

AHowes
Might want to hunt for the instructions for the ek ftw3 water block.. I couldn't find any good videos on YouTube with a quick search.. prob are some videos on the ek ftw3 block on there hehe.

Yeah I did find some vids. Like you said leave the backplate and remove the 4 screws around the GPU then its fairly simple. Going to call them first tho my last card wasn't this bad right out of the box.

Pull it off and take those pics of the contact on both the gpu and block! Maybe there's a chance there's no goop on it hehe.

Just be careful removing the 5 small plugs before listing off the cooler.

I just went ahead and RMA. Spoke to the technician over the phone. They handling the shipping cost both ways this time. They may not have replacement stock for 2-3 days he said but meh as long as I get a working one this time.
 
I did try removing the small plugs but tbh those headers are so sensitive even if you're careful there is a chance of headers breaking. Removed two rest of them were stuck in there pretty tight and would have required excessive force. 

I had to replace the original card that was getting this specific crash, because nothing could be done for it anymore.  Mine was crashing within minutes after leaving idle, at first it was only under heavy load until it got really bad.  And the 2nd one I was going to RMA because it was hitting 93*C within minutes. Since I had the weekend between the card actually being picked up I decided to do some more testing. I will leave the improving the airflow part out, considering you stated heat isn't an issue. Also I only improved airflow even more to get better on load temps after the card started working like it should. I bought a EVGA Powerlink, which as you probably know has integrated solid state capacitors for power filtering. And our common denominator seems to be the Be Quiet Dark Power 11 pro psu line. Nothing in the bios or monitoring was showing any 12v or 5.5 rail fluctuations, but when the Powerlink was attached the problem magically resolved itself. I'm running at 59*C at load now and my replacement card never had any crash issues in the first place, but my guess is over time the issue would have resurfaced without it. Mainly, because it was displaying the same behavior as my first card running on high fan rpm struggling to cool itself when it really shouldn't be having any issues running Furmark and games.
 
All I can say is if you are getting this crash RMA the card because it will just get worst, at least in my case. And EVGA for sure has excellent RMA service, make a support ticket or open an RMA, and include your the crash details etc. Once you get your automated RMA number confirmation by email write it down. I'd suggest calling by phone at business hours to get your RMA and shipping labels faster, instead of having to wait 1-2 working days for the process to complete. For some reason the Be Quiet Dark Power PSU line has issues with the EVGA 1080 ti and since the Powerlink has power filtering and isn't overly expensive I'd just get one for your replacement card. You could also get the Powerlink first before RMA of course but from my experience once this crash started happening things got worst from there on. Only question is if your card is at the point where EVGA will be able to replicate this crash at the RMA center or not.
 
Anyway hope it helps all I can really tell you is the experience I had with my 1080ti.

I pretty much went through every test possible nothing yielded any results, since I have the EVGA Powerlink on my replacement card its not been overheating or throttling the fans. And is now running at full load with no problems.  All I can say when I started encountering this particular crash it was at first just forced shutdowns until eventually it was guaranteed crash within minutes. I can't tell you for sure whether getting a Powerlink will solve the issue for you, but it is worth a try and you can always return it if it does not.  You can test it on your current card first  if you want, but in my experience as soon as the crashing happens it just gets worst eventually resulting in RMA. In my case without the Powerlink the second card would have eventually burnt itself out to the same state as the first. And yes to me it is kind of weird that the Powerlink is needed, but since it solved my issue after allot of troubleshooting I'm glad since it was becoming frustrating. Personally never had this many issues with a card myself. I did report everything back to the EVGA technicians so I don't know maybe open a ticket? They may have done further testing with my old card or the issue in general and have more specific answers to the problem.

Lithiumsword
I ordered a new seasonic prime ultra 1000W psu. Its possible that I may have some fluctuations on one of the rails from the Corsair 750 that I currently own (2 years old).  I was planning on replacing the part in the near future anyways so we'll see if that fixes the hard crashes or if I have to send my card out to EVGA.  Though in the mean time I have lowered the power target to 80% and underclocked the gpu and ram by 200Mhz which seems to have temporary fixed the crashing issues in all games.  

Under Volting isn't a real fix specially since you not getting what you paid for. My 1000W was brand new and showed no fluctuations at all. And it had no issues with my older cards, of course the 1080ti also draws more power. I don't know why it causes issues with the FTW3 maybe something to do with the ICX that needs very specific voltage, which the Powerlink with the integrated solid state capacitors seemed to achieve. 

Cool GTX
EVGA PowerLink
 (excerpt)
"Integrated solid state capacitors give you power filtering
For maximum stability, and it won't affect your overclock!"
 
 
The root cause seems to be one or both of these:
 
(1) that you could not get full contact between your GPU and PSU cables, until you installed the PowerLink
 
(2) Your Seasonic PSU is faulty and the power filtering in the PowerLink helped
 
 

1. It wasn't a contact issue. These cables are fairly standard and were fully inserted and snapped on and also tested with other cards, including testing a separate set of cables.  It's another underlying issue. I could do further testing but honestly it is running fine now and spent enough time searching for a workaround + Gave the German EVGA technicians detailed feedback for them to do further tests.
2. He ordered the Seasonic and is still running the old Corsair. You may have  misread that a bit. He didn't mention  anything about Powerlink either that was me, which is what resolved the issue in my case.

Lithiumsword

shaolinn

Lithiumsword
I ordered a new seasonic prime ultra 1000W psu. Its possible that I may have some fluctuations on one of the rails from the Corsair 750 that I currently own (2 years old).  I was planning on replacing the part in the near future anyways so we'll see if that fixes the hard crashes or if I have to send my card out to EVGA.  Though in the mean time I have lowered the power target to 80% and underclocked the gpu and ram by 200Mhz which seems to have temporary fixed the crashing issues in all games.  

Under Volting isn't a real fix specially since you not getting what you paid for. My 1000W was brand new and showed no fluctuations at all. And it had no issues with my older cards, of course the 1080ti also draws more power. I don't know why it causes issues with the FTW3 maybe something to do with the ICX that needs very specific voltage, which the Powerlink with the integrated solid state capacitors seemed to achieve. 

This is only a temporary fix, if I have to undervolt it to make it work after the new psu is installed I'll be sending my card back. No reason to have a ftw3 that can't preform at its base settings.

Yup makes sense hope it works for you with new PSU