I've seen similar reports. Setting a fan speed profile to keep the fans from turning off entirely seems to have fixed it for others, and it might for you. I'm not sure if afterburner will control that third fan, so you might have to use PX1.
 
The ticking, as I understand it, is from the fan turning off and back on quickly. I believe that was addressed with a MCU firmware update that PX1 does. Do you have the latest PX1 installed? https://www.evga.com/precisionx1/

So PX1 updated the firmware right? If so, and if you don't want to set a fan profile that starts at 25% + to avoid the ticking, and you can't stand it - contact EVGA for additional troubleshooting/RMA: https://www.evga.com/about/contactus/

I will see about creating a custom profile. I'm sure that would fix it but I was hoping that they would be able to make a driver for addressing this.

Hello there,
I have been using my RTX 3080 XC Ultra for about a month and it was working fine up until yesterday. That's when I noticed the occasional whirring/clicking sound. After a bit of digging around the internet, I found the information about 20 series fan issue. The sound is more or less the same. As the topic creator wrote, it becomes more or less inaudible when going to 25%+ fan speed with Precision X1. When you're at lower speeds, you can visually see the fan keeps spinning up at regular intervals and that's when you get the sound. Also, it's only fan nr. 3. Nr. 1 and 2 are fine as far as I can tell. I have updated the firmware. Does anyone have any idea, how to fix it or whether it's the RMA lottery hoping you do not get another card with the same issue?
 
Any information would be appreciated.
 
Thank you.
 
G.

What drivers are you guys on?  This sounds like it's partly the fan control issue that came along with the 457.09 drivers, if you're on those, I would suggest trying the previous driver until the fan control issue is fixed in the next driver update.
If it continues after that, then obviously it's probably an issue that needs an RMA to fix.

Alright, tried uninstalling the latest drivers, went to 456.71, but unfortunately that did not help solve the issue. The soft whirring sound on the fan nr. 3 whenever it spins up persists. At slow speeds (under 25%) you hear it just about every second, as the fan does not spin constantly, but rather its motor gives it speed boosts at a fixed interval. Higher speeds, you do not hear anything.

 
Even the fan on my 2080Ti Hybrid does that (the GPU fan, not the radiator fan) - it's just the fan powering off/on, it's nothing broken. You can change minimum level on the fan curve to try to alleviate it, or try switching to oc bios as SpareTimePC just suggested. You could also try turning on Boost Lock in Precision X.
 

Removed.

FYI - I have the same issue on my 3080 FTW3 Gaming.
The 3rd fan often has a clicking noise and the fan revs up/down frequently when at low RPMs, almost like it's getting stuck or having trouble starting. It also recently started randomly spinning up to 100% for about 5-10 seconds at a time, even when idle or at low loads/temps.

i have the same issue with my 3070ti FTW ULTRA. have you guys ever got it fixed?

I have this issue now too, with a brand new 3070 ti Ftw Ultra. 3d fan between 0 and 30%. Any solutions ?

Mine will rattle briefly when starting from 0 rpm but goes away instantly, my issue is my card will IDLE at 60 F and fan 3 will turn on and off quickly in about 10 seconds intervals causing the thing to constantly tick over and over.  This could be fixed if the fans turn on at 60c and off at 45c or something to that effect... as of right now they turn on at like 60c and off a 59c its so bad

Aecursis
FYI - I have the same issue on my 3080 FTW3 Gaming.
The 3rd fan often has a clicking noise and the fan revs up/down frequently when at low RPMs, almost like it's getting stuck or having trouble starting. It also recently started randomly spinning up to 100% for about 5-10 seconds at a time, even when idle or at low loads/temps.

Might require an RMA.  Or set a custom curve so it doesn't go too low. 

wieseja
I have the exact same issue with my 3070 FTW3 card, and an RMA replacement did not fix it.  Only fan 3 does it. Seems to be a bigger issue going on.

It's a "feature". Fans on EVGA RTX 20xx series cards clicked as well.
RMA'ing the card is not the solution. EVGA caring enough to avoid the design problem is the solution.