We mentioned computer issues, recently. My computer broke the other day.
My computer had been randomly and intermittantly turning off. Happened twice in the last few days, and I wanted to figure out why. The processor is the part of the computer that does the actual computing. It turns ones and zeroes into different ones and zeroes and the rest of the computer is, ultimately, just there to facilitate that process. This is, generally, the most expensive bit of the computer. That is not the part that broke.
The main side-effect of computing is heat. In order to keep the processor in its normal temperature range (which is somewhere above "hot enough to burn you" but below "on fire"), there's a heat sink. That's the big flanged aluminum thing inside your computer, probably with a fan on it. The idea is that it draws heat from the processor, where it is dissipated into the environment. That is also not the part that broke.
The heat sink needs to have solid contact with the processor to function; that lets it conduct heat efficiently so that the processor does not catch fire. There's a plastic bit that the heat sink latches on to, so that it can maintain that contact. That's the part that broke.
As you can see, it's a difficult piece to explain to people and it took a fair amount of doing to find a place that sold it separately.
Update:
Looks like there's a place that sells them, only 20 miles away, and for the same price that Amazon wants to ship one. So I don't have to scrap a mostly-working computer because a little plastic thing snapped off. Unfortunately, the bit about my heat sink not being the part that broke? Apparently I was being optimistic. The heat sink fan also broke, and my computer can't stay on for more than ninety seconds at a time.
So I get a new heat sink too. So far, everything appears to be mostly working.