I bought a EVGA GeForce GTX980 almost the same day she came to market during Autumn of 2014. I was upgrading from a 9800GT (still alive in another computer), so you can imagine the difference.
 
Today, she died in a blaze of incinerated capacitors. It was giving slight failure from a couple of months now, and I hope this post help somebody else to recognize the symptoms and save your card, and if any engineer from EVGA is reading, help him also to improve the series 30, 40, and beyond.
 
The card stopped working from time to time in the middle of nothing, but either Linux or Windows always recovered. It was just a blank screen for a second. A couple of month latter, the screen started to not recognize the Display Port of the card. You had to disconnect the screen and unplugged for it to be able to reach the card signal again; although the HDMI and the DVI worked perfectly. I replaced recently the PSU of the main computer, first time with a complete modular, got an EVGA 750W Gold actually and things where going good so far. But here we are one month later. Today a capacitor popped, leaving behind the characteristic smell of death. The final autopsy revealed that nothing could be done.
 
The card has play everything from 2014. I think the first game was Shadow of Mordor, from that came several games, The Witcher III, GTA V, Skyrim, Portal 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Bioshock Infinite, This War of Mine, countless hours of Crusader King II, she saw me missing 99% shots in the XCOMs, defeat the Moonlord of Terraria, we slaughtered together the murderboss uberdemon from Divinity ToS II, saved many timelines in Into The Breach. Several games from the VR that brought joy and terrors to many friends. She has run emulators from consoles, she has also played old games: the remastered Monkey Island, Sam and Max, Heroes III, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Transport Tycoon, and many many others. Ironically, the card burned while playing Overcook, and I’m happy that the last frames she rendered was from a great game, a suitable ending for such great card, before going dark, forever.
 
Goodbye, your framerate was always high, and you did your best even in games locked at 30FPS. The rest of the components miss you already.

Sad to hear your card gave up the ghost. Even more sad is the GTX 980 is still a very capable & relevant card even going in to 2019! You could always see if it's something EVGA can repair? and pay out pocket repair cost(not sure if EVGA even does this anymore) if it's still cheaper then going out and spending $300-500+ on a new card. Also to note, I am always seeing GTX 980's on the EVGA B-Stock page for around the $200 range which would even come with a 1-Year warranty.

antlucas1
Hi, I came across this post after having the same issues with my system, I was getting crashes but windows was recovering from them, but I also get the no display issues whenever I turn on my pc or wake from, I had put it down to my new monitor but after the crashes I swapped back to my old card and ran for that for a week and none of the issues reappeared until I put my 980ti hybrid back in. I am running my monitor via the display port, and have noticed that if I switch to hdmi I have no monitor issues but the odd windows crash still. I would run on hdmi however my monitor only supports 30hz on hdmi at 4k, that is why I use the display port. I'm concerned about the card being safe now, especially after reading other posts and components burning out, as I am not the only user of my pc the rest of my family use especially my 6 year old playing games. Are there any suggestions as I believe my card is still in warranty. 

 
Submit a request for an RMA if you are unde rwarranty...you can check that by going to your products (if you registered it...and you should have)
 
 

Gromenawer, I would like to give you a warm welcome to the EVGA forums and I'm sorry your graphics card failed. I must say though that I did get a chuckle from the irony of the card dying playing Overcooked.