Well in light of getting my computer up and running with legit copies of Windows XP and some other stuff, I spent some money on some hardware upgrades, namely the LCD widescreen, and some much quieter fans (that have yet to be installed).

So i was taking apart the heatsink/fan assembly on my Radeon 9700 video card, and when I finally nudged the heatsink off the GPU, I noticed that it took a couple of GPU resistors with it. The freagn thermal paste acted as a glue and took the resistors with it.

needless to say i'm pretty pissed.

that is all.