so...funny story, i opened up my graphics card (the Palit 1050 TI that "died" a few weeks back) to see if there's any visible damage (if anything short circuited or whatever)

while i didn't find anything out of the ordinary, i decided to reapply the thermal paste, just to see if that'll do anything

it works just fine. even after playing some csgo and running a benchmark. no graphical glitches, or crashes.

i am completely baffled.