http://img46.exs.cx/img46/5262/dsc004041bg.jpg i turned on my pc for like 1min, i touched that heatsink and it was already really hot Could someone also please explain what the device located under the heatsink is for and what it does

That is probably one of the Motherboard chipsets. Try Googling motherboard chipsets for more info. The HS is there to disipate heat, as you know. Some chipsets even have fans accompanying the HS.

That is the heat sink on the system board chip set. Usually contains things like the memory controller, PCI bus controller, etc. They do get kind of warm. Also looks like the video card is blocking any air flow from the fancy fans from getting to this heat sink. Although that type of processor fan should be blowing some warm air across it, and the back panel fan should be exhausting enough air that its not too warm. I hope you have some opening in the front cover area so cool air can get it an flow across that chip.

T'is the Northbridge Heastsink, mine gets hot also, its nothing to worry about. Zee. AMD Athlon 2800+ barton @ 12.5 X 176 : 2200mhz 512Mb Corsair RAM MSI KT6 Delta mobo Leadtek AGP 6600 gt 128Mb 120Gb Seagate HDD

That is the northbridge heatsink (between the cpu's heatsink and the graphics card). The southbridge heatsink is the smaller heatsink at the bottom right (underneath the ram). The northbridge handles the communication between the cpu, ram, agp, and pci. The southbridge handles I/O stuff (audio, serial, usb, etc...ie...everything else the northbridge doesn't handle) When the northbridge overheats, you'll experience problems such as crashing, and I think random BSOD's. Under normal conditions (non-overclocked), the northbridge heatsink expects some air to blow over it from the CPU. That's why the fins are running up and down instead of side to side. You're not using a stock/retail cpu/heatsink, so I don't think the air is flowing over it as expected. There are other cpu/heatsink units with various designs...some have overhang and do blow air onto the heatsink (ie: turns the passive northbridge heatsink into an active one). Now, if your northbridge heatsink isn't getting cooled enough, you need to either affix a fan somewhere to blow onto it (ie: hang a case fan in front of it), or replace the heatsink with an aftermarket one (some of them come with fans as well). Note some aftermarket ones might not fit with aftermarket cpu/fan combos. Another thing you could try is running a duct from the rear case fans so that it's sucking air from the northbridge area. On a side note, how many ram modules do you have? It looks like you have 3 ram...dual channel will be disabled in that case. JackG - The graphics card isn't in the way...those fancy fans are meant to cool down the graphics card. In my case, it's the rear side (top side) of the graphics card that tends to run hot, which is not so good for the northbridge chipset. Good thing my case door has a fan that blows onto both the graphics card and the northbridge heatsink.

They will run warm as a rule. However from your pic it's time to clean out the cpu heatsink. You've got dust bunnies hanging out of the fins... I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid...

"What is this heatsink for?" see beginning of post #4