Safe Operating Heat

[ilickbabies]

I have a pre-built gaming PC by CyberPowerPC that I purchased back in December of 2013. I replaced the stock card in it around august of 2014 with a Geforce 9800 GT card. The card has been running many games (GRID 2, Skyrim, Etc) since then on stock clocking settings. Recently, I installed MSI Afterburner to see if I could get any better performance out of my card. Before I started overclocking, I ran a benchmark test on GRID 2, low settings, full resolution (1920x1080). My GPU was touching and going beyond 100 degrees celsius. I'm concerned about the health of my GPU, as I have probably been running it at this heat for several months. Should I be concerned about my GPU? If so, what steps should I take to make sure my GPU is at a safe temperature?

 

[nostall]

105C is what Nvidia lists as the maximum operating temperature for that card, and it sounds like you are right there.
BUT, you didn't state whether you were getting any slow downs or lagging when it was near this temperature - a sure sign that the card is getting too hot.
If you are not getting any slow downs, weird grahics, lag in games, or lock-ups, then I suspect the monitoring software. Uninstall your current version of Afterburner, and all the Nvidia drivers including (if it is installed) GeForce Experience, and then run CCleaner (download, install and run if need be). Following that reinstall the Nvidia video drivers and physX drivers and do a clean install using the 'custom' install option. If you are NOT using 3D glasses do not install the 3D drivers that come with the Nvidia driverpackage. Likewise, for the time being I would not install GeForce Experience.
Then reinstall Afterburner (not Kombustor) and see what the readings are. You can also try HWInfo64, it gives decently accurate readings.
Big thing: Check to make sure all the case fans are spinning and case, fans and (if there are any) filters are cleaned: blow out with canned air if necessary.