GPU dead month after re-paste - attributable to said re-paste?

I purchased a Sapphire RX Vega 56 Pulse in late March, 5 months ago. Performance was fine, although the card clicked with its cycles - on high framerate this would sound like a low-pitch coil whine, on low framerate you could, simply by looking at the refresh rate and listen to the clicking noise, see that 1 frame = 1 click, and website animations also caused this (on button animations, window scrolling, etc) - and it wasn’t perfectly stable. Driver crashes and such.

Mid-July I changed the cooling paste on the card, and saw improved thermals & noise levels. Card not hitting the 80’s C at all. Re-pasted methodically with meticulous, excessive care using isopropyl alcohol. Mid-August the card dies utterly. PC hangs while gaming, lose image to monitor & VR headset I was wearing, and upon reboot PC no longer detects anything from the PCIe slot, no fan spin, only response from card at all is that its red LEDs still light up. PCIe slot still functional with other GPU.

Given the success of the re-paste, and the functional performance of the card for a month after it took place, is there any conceivable possibility that the death of the card comes as a direct consequence of me somehow mishandling the disassembly & reassembly of the card associated with the re-paste, despite the fact that there were no thermal indications of any improper cooling at all? Thank you.