My GPU heat sink is touching my metal computer case. Is this a problem?

[MrZoraman]

I'm worried my whole case is going to heat up and cause all kinds of problems. Thanks in advance!

[SPARTAN VI]

Is it vertically mounted without any ventilation on that panel? That would probably lead to some thermal issues.

If it's a traditional horizontal mount, the worst thing I'd imagine that could happen is buzzing/vibration noise from the videocard touching against the panel. Most likely no thermal repercussions from this. 

[MrZoraman]

10 minutes ago, SPARTAN VI said:

Is it vertically mounted without any ventilation on that panel? That would probably lead to some thermal issues.

If it's a traditional horizontal mount, the worst thing I'd imagine that could happen is buzzing/vibration noise from the videocard touching against the panel. Most likely no thermal repercussions from this. 

It is mounted traditionally. My case has a some sort of metal cable cover thing. I've attached a pic (not my build) and squared it in red. The heat sink of the gpu rests right against that. I actually had to flex my motherboard up a few millimeters to get the pcie clip to snap into place.

[Bombastinator]

Almost certainly not.  There probably isn’t much heat conduction, and even if there was all it would do is make the cooler work a hair better.  Think about how hard it is to get a cpu cooler to transfer heat from a cpu.  It takes unreasonably flat surfaces and a bunch of other stuff.  A mere touch isn’t going to do much.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Euchre]

More metal mass in contact is more to absorb heat, and the extra surface area is more heat dissipation.

[LogicalDrm]

Heatsink or plastic shroud? If the actual heatsink touches the case, it might spread heat to wider area. But it won't heatup whole case, not by far. Just check our the "awful heatsinks" video from LTT where they talk about why air coolers don't have massive fins:

 

If its plastic, then heat transfer is non-existent.