Posting this on all threads:

Fixed: this was my first ever build and after reseating my gpu, I saw some less than intelligent wiring (6+2 pin coming out of my card, daisy chained to a 6 pin that then went into the VGA port on my power supply). I cringed and pulled those wires and replaced it with a PCIE cable from my wife's new build (the reason I removed my 2nd 1080 in the first place). That cable only went into a CPU slot on the power supply but didn't think much of it. Turns out using cables that are not associated with your specific PSU is a nono. Everything works fine and I am dumb for several reasons but at least I learned with (seemingly) no catastrophic consequences.

Thank yall for your help and consideration and sorry I wasted your time.