Component fallen off graphics card

[fatboyjim]

Hi all,

I had a bit of a mishap tonight and knocked a component off of my nVidia GeForce 6600GT AGP card... it looks like a capacitor, but slightly different (it is entirely silver, rather than silver with protective coating on all but the top)

Printed on the top is a third of blue paint, indicating the direction it should be soldered onto the board, also
A 43N
330
16V

I did this whilst the computer was turned off, but decided to bite the bullet and turn it back on. I've been using Windows for an hour, then played SWAT 4 for a while and didn't notice any ill effects, everything is running at its normal speed and the temperature monitor isn't any higher/lower than normal

Have I got lucky and broken off a useless component? Or am I likely to notice problems later down the line?

Also, is there any danger of this board now doing something crazy like flying a fire? I'm not really into electronics so don't know the importance of certain components

Cheers
Jim

[juppy]

It's probably just an aluminum electrolytic capacitor. The first row of numbers is just the lot number, second row says it's 330 microfarads, and the third shows it has a 16 volt rating. As long as it's running okay without it, there's probably no harm done. I know that sounds dumb because you'd think every component on there has *some* purpose. The thing is though, it might just be something minor like a noise filter capacitor. That's usually all that caps are used for....noise filtering and power storage for circuits that need a little extra boost every now and then. There was someone else on here awhile back that had the same thing go wrong.....knocked a cap off but the card was still working fine. I haven't read anything else from that person about it going bad yet either, so I assume it's still working fine.

And no, knocking a capacitor off isn't likely to cause a fire on your board. If it was going to do something like that, it would've likely already done it while you were running it in Windows and SWAT 4. My own personal opinion would be go ahead and use it unless some other symptoms show up (i.e. video problems, reboots, etc).

[glc]

I have a Matrox G550 with a busted cap - its been working just fine that way for years.