VIDIA's decision to sell its reference-design GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card at a $100 premium over the SKU's MSRP of $599, is beginning develop cracks, with early adopters complaining of erratic default fan behavior. The GTX 1080 Founders Edition graphics card features NVIDIA's reference lateral-blower-type cooler, which didn't exactly blow us away, in our review of the card. Customers across the forumscape, including on NVIDIA's own GeForce Forums, are complaining of an issue where the fan of the cooler has a mind of its own, and revs up from 2,000 RPM to 3,000 RPM intermittently, and drops back to its idle speed. This, users complain, is particularly annoying if you're not gaming.
The users observe that these sudden and unpredictable spikes in fan-speed are not in response to rising GPU temperatures or clock speeds. Sudden variations in fan-speed are worse than gradual variations in response to legitimate triggers, as it also means sudden changes in noise, which is distracting. Users also observe that you can't even use third-party software (eg: EVGA Precision) to stabilize or override the fan-behavior, as the speed-spikes don't respect custom settings.
And that leaves you with a good chunk of ref 8GB that people will openly avoid. That will eventually get price cut and sold for, perhaps, $220 or less with a game bundle. Just get it out of the way now before products sit on shelves.
Hell, following the non-USA comments on other forums, the retailers are already jacking up the price which is strike 3 in those regions.