I've got an Inno3D GeForce GTX 980Ti Hybrid Black Edition GPU. A few months ago I started having problems in most games, getting the "Driver stopped responding..." error (with no apparent pattern, sometimes it crashed quickly, sometimes after an HOUR or two). I googled and tried all software solutions I could find without success. The temperature seemed to be OK. The games it never crashed in were Steel Division, XCOM2 and, I THINK, DOOM 2016.

Recently I was running Heaven benchmark to stress the GPU. I had the case open and ACCIDENTALLY touched a watercooling fan of the GPU for a fraction of a second. The system restarted and I felt a faint smell of burned electronics.

Since then I'm still able to use the GPU in 2D in Windows UI and even in menu screens of the games; but whenever a 3D scene starts, even if it's a 3D on a webpage, the whole system crashes and restarts. The device manager doesn't report any problem with the GPU. I tested with the built in CPU graphics and it doesn't crash.

In my understanding, if the main GPU processor died, the card would be completely unusable. Maybe it's a safety MECHANISM that restarts the system, because the GPU THINKS it's got no cooling (all fans are working)?

Does anyone have any ideas on what could cause such a behaviour? Any suggestions what I could test to find out what the problem is? Any advice would be much appreciated.

Other specs:
Asus Z170 Pro Gaming
i6600k
32GB ram
m.2 + ssd