Soldato
I appreciate that people are trying to help:
1: With the card out of the case on the motherboard on its own the internal GPU temps are the same. With or without a 120mm case fan being held next to the backplate where all the heat gathers.
2: 3840x2160 @ 60FPS is what the card cannot handle in some games (Arkham Knight yes Mad Max no) without going to 100% fan mode. 1920x1080 @60 or even 2560x1440 @60 the card can handle in silence & temps rarely go above 70C its well within thermal tolerances.
3: I have looked at several reviews where they took thermal images (toms hardware even took video) of the backplate region. Within 30 mins its gone red hot around 101.C with no cooling to it either on an open bench test rig so within a case it will go a little higher. This seems to be the cards weak spot it needs a backplate to prevent board warping if its not the marginal reference cooler otherwise you need a backplate model which traps the heat even when they drill loads of little slots in it like the MSI has the entire backplate drilled out into little slots (they would not do that unless they knew it was too hot would they!).
4: Precision X does not help if you set a target temp the card stutters a little when it dials back the power/volts to keep it within parameters.
This tells me its not the case its the jump from 1080/1440 to 4K basically maxes out the GPU & entire PC producing more heat. I am just going to keep monitoring temps in games & keep an eye on things for now see how it goes.
The backplate will be hot. That's residual heat from the VRMs not the core. The VRMs will get hot and are designed to take the heat. Those pictures will be from the reference titan x cooler. an aftermarket cooler will be cooler as they have better Heatsinks and overall cooling for VRMs. Titan x's can easily throttle at 92c with their reference cooler.
If someone else is getting 10-15c cooler than you with the same card and same settings. Doesn't that tell you something?