That's okay, I needed to do a full cleaning anyways
...once
I would be so worried about destroying the GPU I'd sooner remove the motherboard and reinstall them both as a single component. Idk if it's just me but I always have an ass of a time getting the GPU in and out of the PCI slot with some trepidatious combination of rocking, pulling/pushing what feels like way too hard, and destroying my fingers trying to operate that little slot lock piece. Skill issue?