A couple of years ago I was removing the stock HS from a 9700 Pro to replace the thick yellow stuff ATI used with new paste and remove the shim. At that time I had just gotten the card checked to make sure it worked and then went to replace the paste, I have done this on more than a few cards.

Havent had this problem before but when removing the HS one of the smds got pulled off the substraight (marked by yellow arrow) and was stuck to the HS in the yellow junk they used. I removed the smd put it in a small container and labeled it for future repair. I did finish pasting the die and tested the card and it still seemed to work fine.

Well that was a couple of years ago and decided to give it another look and found another smd component was broke in half (marked by red arrow) I'm guess from the same thing. Well I have the one component (about the size of a head of a pin) that I was already worried I would lose while trying to put it back on but no idea what the other one is that is broke in half so hard to find a replacement.

Card seems to work fine but not thrilled using it missing 2 components. Take the time to fix or just let it roll?

(note picture of card is from vgamuseum.info with arrows added where the broken/missing components are)