I'd say the chances of it being the motherboard is very low.

Yes, that can happen sometimes. Getting thermal paste on that spot could have caused a probelm with your cpu since artic silver 5 is conductive.

http://www.arcticsilver.com/as5.htm
 
Not Electrically Conductive:
Arctic Silver 5 was formulated to conduct heat, not electricity.
(While much safer than electrically conductive silver and copper greases, Arctic Silver 5 should be kept away from electrical traces, pins, and leads.
While it is not electrically conductive, the compound is very slightly capacitive and could potentially cause problems if it bridges two close-proximity electrical paths.)

So I think I did have multiple hardware issues. I think I fixed one of them but not the other. The CPU and RAM passed all testing I did. The GPU crashes when anything GPU intensive is running. It crashes in Battlefield, 3D mark, and Heaven. I have artifacts all over the screen that are not going away either. This is a clean install  of 417.01. Its also now telling me I have no drivers installed and I need to download them. Even though I know for sure they were installed. I have nothing left to rule out. I think I may have a faulty GPU.

Tyver
So I think I did have multiple hardware issues. I think I fixed one of them but not the other. The CPU and RAM passed all testing I did. The GPU crashes when anything GPU intensive is running. It crashes in Battlefield, 3D mark, and Heaven. I have artifacts all over the screen that are not going away either. This is a clean install  of 417.01. Its also now telling me I have no drivers installed and I need to download them. Even though I know for sure they were installed. I have nothing left to rule out. I think I may have a faulty GPU.

I have continued to test. Got my hands on another motherboard and processor. System still fails to boot most of the time when graphics card is installed. 
 
New configuration used to test
 
2080 Ti FTW3 (stock and OC bios)
EVGA 1000 G3
Intel i7 8700K (stock)
EVGA z370 FTW
Corsair Vengence x2 8GB 
Samsung Pro 960 512 GB

I got the new card today and it lets me boot up and hasnt crashed in a hour of Heaven running. So its a marked improvement so far. I will continue to test over the weekend.
 
There is one thing Ive noticed. I am seeing stutters when running Heaven. I saw on another thread, DP was having issues with stuttering but here is some background information as well as a interesting thing Ive noticed. 
 
I installed 417.01 driver as it was the one I reverted to when I was testing earlier.
I am using a DP on a high refresh rate monitor
Firmware on card is current
Bios on MB is 1.10, current unless it was updated a few days ago
 
 
So here is the interesting thing I noticed. Every time there is a stutter on the screen, I can audibly hear the the fans lose power for a split second then spool back up to the set RPM. Its happen exactly in sync with the screen stuttering. I didnt notice this before on the other card, but considering the other card wouldnt run at all when testing, it doesnt surprise me. The stuttering isnt happeing when the bios switch on the card was set to normal, only OC. So I thought maybe the card wasnt getting enough power and increased the power level to maximum in Precision X1. This helped to some degree. The sutters were less often but still happen. The fans still lose power for a split second too. Nothing else seems to be effected. Could the card be limited and not getting enough power during demanding sections? I havent even touched the frequencies on the graphics card. Could the higher fan RPM when the card is switched to OC on the card push current draw too high?
 
I have a 1000 G3 PSU, Intel 8700k @ stock, corasir vengance RAM 8GBx2 @ stock, and only 3 fans in my whole case. I would hate to think my whole system is under powered, plus I would think other areas would show signs. I do have a 8 pin daisy chain cable running to the card, the one that comes with the PSU. Could running 2 dedicated 8 pin cables to the card help, one to each 8 pin slot on the card? 
 
 
 

Yeah Ive noticed that in the past it stuttered but it just seemed more frequent than I remember. Also just thought it was odd that the stutter coincided with the fans slowing down and spooling up. Also that I didnt notice them with the switch set to normal. If the fans were slowing down and spooling up again in normal setting, I sure didnt notice it. Plus increasing the power limit significantly helped the issue. It all just seems odd to me. Its not a huge issue to me so long as it doesnt cause problems down the road, I dont mind. The card is working (so far) so its better than the other one I had. Just odd to me, thats all.
 
Are the stutters intentional and cause the load on the card to drop? If so, would the card cool off that fast to allow the fan curve to drop off. Ive never really looked to deep into how the program works and how all my parts interact while running it. However, I may jsut be over scrutinizing everything since my last card gave me so much trouble.