New
#11
First, this is a sign of improper power supplied to the card. Do unplug the GPU again, and clean the pcie slot with a soft, big brush. Then, check the power supply cables that goes at the back of the card (a multimeter would be handy but at least plug them firmly).
About updates, Gigabyte even has a backup bios chip. Flashing is perfectly safe the last handful of years (biggest problem before was flashing the wrong BIOS, never a burn-out chip). Don't trust tin-foil-hat-people. BIOS updates are most of the times critical for the good functioning of your system, for both security and preventing data loss. Manufacturing process is getting slimmer every cycle, and with it, more flaws that needs to be worked around by software patches at the BIOS, drivers, and OS level.
You could also disable hibernate that will accelerate the shutdown.
[ still works from admin command prompt: powercfg -h off ]