Heatsink came off my Creative X-Fi soundcard.

So I installed 16GB of RAM and when I booted up I got an IRQ conflict (holy shit welcome back early 1990s). Anyway, not sure wtf happened, but re-seating the sound card seemed to resolve this, but while putting the screw in to mount it in place the heatsink fell off. The thermal paste was all dry and crusty, so I am guessing this to be the reason it fell off, and I read online many other people have had this happen. I should also mention I bought the card back in 2006.

1. Do you really need the heatsink on the soundcard, or can I go without it? I am guessing it's there for a reason, but I'm going to have to go find some thermal adhesive.

2. Is it really warranted to buy a new soundcard? My current card is the Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic. It seems to fit my need ok, but has there been any big breakthroughs since 2006?

3. Suggestions on new cards?

Seems like I might as well wait to buy a sound card if I am to go that route. Creative has a new line of cards coming out in December.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/creative_debuts_ultra_high_performance_z_series_sound_blaster_pci_express_cards

Thanks for all the help guys! I went to Softmap and they only had thermal pads and thermal paste, but no thermal adhesives. I then came up with the ingenious plan of using Arctic Silver 5 and 4 very tiny drops of super clue at the corners of the SPU. It's on there and everything is happy. I most likely would never be able to get the heatsink off, but fuck it. I doubt I will ever want to and as I posted above, there are newer cards coming out.