What just fell off of my computer?

[Krynn72]

Its a heatsink, but I can't tell from where. Not sure if its even possible, but anyone recognize what it might be from?

My computer's been locking up during games recently (screen goes black, plays repeating noise over and over until I hard restart) so I decided to dust out my pc. As I leaned it over, I heard this little dude sliding around on the bottom. Now, while there was a TON of dust in my PC, I'm thinking this might be the bigger problem.

 

[VirusType2]

Probably from your video card if you are having lock ups during games. Sound cards and motherboards also have heatsinks. Easiest way to find out is to put a light in there and look.

I haven't heard of a heatsink being damaged like that; the only thing I can think of is a sudden extreme temperature change. Like, if your house is 50 degrees in the winter morning, and you turn on your computer and instantly start stressing the component - like rendering 3D scenes or playing games. So it goes from 50 degrees to like 90 in just seconds, maybe it could crack. Still I don't believe that's entirely to blame:

Not that I know a whole lot about aluminum, but I know you can put an aluminum pan in a 400 degree oven, and then put it under a cold tap and it should be fine. Maybe it was already fractured during shipping and handling, cracked before it was even put on the circuit board, or impure aluminum, possibly?

 

[Krynn72]

I don't think its actually broken. Theres no fracture makes on it really, I think this was the entire bit, and that the adhesive just failed. I tried looking around for some part that was missing a heatsink, but I didnt see anything out of place, and I don't really know what bits on the motherboard/video card need it.

Come to think of it, it probably is from my video cards. I put a 3rd party cooler on it a while back, and it was a tight fit that was pressing up against things that looked like these. In fact, I may have even put these on there myself. Its been a long time since I did that though, I'll have to check what I ordered and see if these came with the package.

 

[VirusType2]

Ah! yeah, that sounds more likely.

Yeah, see if you can find an image of (also the back) of your video card doing an image search. Then perhaps you could compare it to yours and see what's missing. It could be a RAM heatsink, but I don't know. Maybe some co-processor on the card.

 

[Krynn72]

Yup, thats what it was. Its one of the things on the left of the package. Damn. I hope the new Nvidia cards come out soon, so I can replace this troublesome card.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

I have an accelero twin turbo on my 8800GT and have an identical heatsink component which came with mine. So definitely from that!

Mine haven't fallen off since I heard the thermal tape they come with sucks, so I stripped all mine down and replaced it with some proper akasa thermal tape which hasn't unstuck yet!