If the price around 1399 I probably buy the cheapest EVGA model that using the reference PCB.  I don't care about the included cooling solution since I be removing it for a water block and it just much easier to find a waterblock for versions that use the reference PCB.  I like EVGA because they always been reliable to me and the way they mount there coolers in the past have always been straight forward and uncomplicated to remove for adding a waterblock.

The decision is will I wait for a waterblock to be available or just go buy it.  There probably enough airflow in my case that running it with the air cooler till I can get a water block will be fine.  I can just disconnect the power to gpu loop pumps till then.

I'm legit buying a new case because I don't think mine will be able to cope with the heat output from the new GPUs.

I know that'll probably be an unpopular opinion but PC components should be subject to the same power saving laws that lamps, air conditioners etc. have faced in the last few decades. People were consuming more power than whole countries to mine bitcoins a while back for God's sake. The idea that a single chip would need 250 - 400 watts to function no longer fits today's zeitgeist.

A bit of an interesting article when it comes to Series X and ray tracing since it's related to RDNA 2.0

https://www.pcgamer.com/xbox-architect-on-ray-tracing-developers-still-want-to-use-traditional-rendering-techniques-without-a-performance-penalty/

It seems that Microsoft is less than enthused about the prospect of ray tracing in the Xbox Series X, despite it being deemed the 'ultimate in realism.' In a Hot Chips deep dive on the AMD-powered GPU at the heart of the next-gen console, Mark Grossman, principal architect at Microsoft, has detailed the graphics silicon inside the Series X and just what role ray tracing has in it.

The short answer seems to be: not much. 

The dual compute units (DCU) of the Big Navi-like GPU inside the Xbox Series X do have specific hardware dedicated to accelerating the real-time ray tracing process. But that seems to be the only change to the RDNA 2.0 dual compute unit compared with the first-gen ones found in the AMD RX 5700-series cards.

"The overall ray tracing speed up varies a lot, but for this task it can be up to 10x the performance of a pure shader-based implementation."

"We do support DirectX Raytracing acceleration, for the ultimate in realism™, but in this generation developers still want to use traditional rendering techniques, developed over decades, without a performance penalty," says Grossman sadly. "They can apply ray tracing selectively, where materials and environments demand, so we wanted a good balance of die resources dedicated to the two techniques."

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Of course, those are pretty vague statements but it will be interesting to see how RDNA 2 performs

Yea I personally own Evga GTX 1080 FTW and it's been great. The only reason I might go with Asus is due to the RGB software since EVGA needs their own software, I can't get it to sync up with my Motherboard and RAM since my Motherboard is Asus and my Ram supports Aura Sync.

Fair enough.  I don't run RGB in my case, just the fans that can be seen outside of case.  Also I currently running almost the exact same card as you, the Evga GTX 1080 SC (with the cooler replace with a EKWB waterblock).  I think the only difference between our cards is yours came with a slightly higher factory OC.

EDIT:  Curious so I looked it up, yours also came with a extra 8 pin so it also capable of a higher custom OC due to having more power available.

Brian Mitsoda has been fired from his position as narrative lead on Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. Ka’ai Cluney, creative director, is also no longer working on it. And Alexandre Mandryka has been brought in as creative consultant.

Paradox statement

https://www.bloodlines2.com/en/an-update-on-the-organizational-changes-for-bloodlines-2

Email to RPS from Brian Mitsoda

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/08/19/brian-mitsoda-has-been-fired-as-narrative-lead-on-bloodlines-2/

I was looking forward to the game, but I find this development worrying. I was considering pre-ordering, but now I will wait for it to release and see how it is.