Originally Posted by
Rincewind
It's a grounding "spring" for the MCP heatsink and should be in contact with the MB tray (according to the guys at the evga forums).
I just finished modding my 780i. And by mod I mean getting it to run under boiling. An out-of-the-box test run had the MCP (southbridge) running at 90C. It went as high as 96C while I was setting up the BIOS.
Apparently, nvidia has a brilliant heat management strategy for their MCP chips which involves tons of thermal paste, and foam heat pads. Except, the foam isn't supposed to be a heat pad. After taking off the MCP 'sink, removing the misplaced foam spacers, bending the heatsink so it was flat and flush, reapplying a reasonable amount of thermal paste, and painstakingly reattaching the MCP heatsink, I am now running between 60 & 70 wishing for a LC solution.
And from what I'm reading at the evga forums, I'm not the only one who got a board where the foam spacers were misplaced and making contact with the northbridge and southbridge chips.