We have been running a DeepLearning11 server for a few months now without any problem. I suspect its FUD from Nvidia. If you have fans in your data center actively cooling the cards, you'll be ok. You should use the 1080Ti Founders Edition or Blower card, as they have a single fan that blows air out of the box (in the DL11 setup).
If your assessment of GeForce reliability is correct, then there's no need for the clause in the EULA at all: people will try to use them in a datacenter, they will fail, and people will use the DC-oriented cards instead.
But that's not the case. Many people are finding they can use GeForce cards in a datacenter just fine, and it's cheaper than buying the DC-oriented cards. This is a money grab, pure and simple.
Not to mention that the EULA has a carve-out that says blockchain processing is permitted. So nvidia is even acknowledging that there's no hardware reliability issue.
If your assessment of GeForce reliability is correct, then there's no need for the clause in the EULA at all: people will try to use them in a datacenter, they will fail, and people will use the DC-oriented cards instead.
But that's not the case. Many people are finding they can use GeForce cards in a datacenter just fine, and it's cheaper than buying the DC-oriented cards. This is a money grab, pure and simple.
I read it, and I’m saying there does not exist any legitimate reason to add that language to the EULA. There’s no benefit it provides to addressing the problem of supposed realiability. It’s just almost never the way companies address such issues.
Whether the GeForce cards are less reliable in that environment or not, that is not why the EULA was changed in this way.