980 Ti overheating badly

[Carnaxus]

I have a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti Windforce 3X OC. I just bought this card in February 2016. I recently bought a new computer case, and immediately started noticing my GPU getting hotter than before. I thought it was just my case, as this new one was designed solely with custom water loops in mind. Now, however, I'm sure there's something wrong with the card.

I've taken both side windows off my case and am blowing a box fan at full power through the case, directly across the graphics card; despite that, it hit 90 degrees (C) on a blank black screen with a simple prompt. Are there any known issues with this card, or do you guys think it just needs new thermal paste?

Extra info: I've never OC'd the card, and in fact have it underclocked as far as Afterburner will take it right now; that doesn't seem to be making any difference. I had zero heat issues with this card in my old case, a Raidmax Viper GT.

Edit because I should have said this in the first place:

It's idling at normal temps, between 38 and 42. It's all the way down at 28 with the box fan on it.

 

[jossrik]

Check to see that the fans are still spinning on the cooler. If they are, try Display Driver Uninstaller and reinstall driver.
Get ahold of Gigabyte perhaps cause it sounds like it may be overvolting/clocking/not downclocking like it should. Make sure all the power leads are good N' connected and everything seems to be working like normal.

 

[Carnaxus]

The fans are definitely spinning; the case has three glass panes on the front half, allowing full view of the motherboard, CPU, and GPU. The thing that's got me worried is that I put a big ol' 24" box fan blowing through the case (from one side, venting out the opposite side, both panes of glass removed) and it still overheated...

I in fact rolled my driver back from the latest all the way to 376.42 because the latest ones all caused the card to forget how to return to idle clock speed. Y'know...maybe I should try a newer driver again? I'll give that a go and report back.

The power leads are definitely connected, and my PSU has well and truly more than enough power. I put in a 900W PSU because I originally planned to go SLI with a pair of these (before the 10 series released), and PCPartPicker said that this build would only use like 400-450 or something.

Edit: Probably should have mentioned this in the OP; it's idling at normal temps. In fact, it's all the way down at 28 right now, probably due to that box fan; it idles on its own at around 38.

 

[jossrik]

If it's idling fine, or pretty well, then adjust the fan curve see if that helps. Also, might be need to reseat the heatsink on that guy. Find out if it voids the warranty before you do it though. 90C for a video card isn't unheard of, though I admit it is on the high side.

 

[Carnaxus]

The first thing I did when I got it was set up a custom curve; by default it hit 100% fans at like 88 degrees. I set it to hit 100% at around 75, and it's been doing that just fine; it just hasn't been enough.

At this point I'm just waiting for my paycheck to come in; I've been planning to get a water cooling loop for this case, and with all that's happened in the past couple days I'm definitely gonna slap it on the GPU instead of the CPU. My FX-8370 is in fact holding its temperatures perfectly well with the stock heatsink (amazingly).

Edit:

I just noticed something odd, and thinking back it's been true for a while. I can't say for sure that this has been happening since I moved everything to my new case, but it's definitely not a brand-new thing. My GPU usage % seems to be a bit high, on average. I first noticed this at an extreme level with Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, which pegged my GPU at 99% usage on the main menu. Among other things I looked into to fix it, that's when I rolled back to an earlier driver; that didn't fix FC3:BD, but it did stop the other issue that cropped up right around the same time, which I explained before.

Just now, I was watching Hulu, and happened to glance up at my tablet that I run the Afterburner app on. I noticed that my GPU usage was up at 16%, although the clock speeds were still at idle speeds. Thinking back, I don't think Hulu has ever used that much of my GPU before.

Edit 2:

More of a momentary rant...paycheck's taking forever to arrive, arg...