@maxim.pechyonkin Thanks for the information on noise. This was one piece of information I was not able to find online!!
I got myself a 1080 Ti Founder’s Edition. So turns out, all those fancy softwares for overclocking and custom fan curves are all for Windows. In Ubuntu, a bit of tweaking in the terminal and config files (as usual) and we can manually set the fan speed. It is possible to also write a script that constantly measures the temperature of the GPU and sets the fan speed accordingly.
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For those interested in the amount of noise this card creates: At stock settings, the fan stays at 40-45%, even at 80C. Since this is the stock setting, it shouldn’t be a problem. The card is designed to operate at high temps. At this speed the fans are about inaudible.
At 60%, the fans become audible, just a bit louder than my case fans. At 80% they become “loud”. Not disturbingly loud to me, but some people may be sensitive to that amount of noise. It sounds like a muffled mini hair-dryer, which is pretty much exactly what it is. Good news is, you don’t have to increase the fans to 80%. The cards will work just fine at default settings.
TL;DR: noise isn’t an issue.