got the 2080ti working and it's in my machine right now :D

turns out the problem was that the fan was irreparably tilted and clipping the heatsink because of it.

since i didn't want to go through the trouble of buying a new fan and removing the heatsink and needing to reapply thermal paste and everything, i did what any (in)sane person would do and bent the heatsink fins down.

after doing that, it wouldn't get stuck anymore but it still sounded like it was catching on something. marked the rest of the heatsink and found out it wasn't really getting stuck on it anymore.

pretty much doused the inside of the thing with machine oil, popped it back in to the gpu, and it works :D stress tested it and the temp never got above 81c, can probably get a bit cooler when i swap some fan stuff around with the rest of my pc!

can you say free 2080ti??