The years of gaming on my rig has caused the fan to start making a very undesirable noise even after removing and cleaning it. Also the temps on it have never been to my liking (191+ F playing FarCry 2) Does anyone have a favorite HSF for VGA cards? I don't watercool so airflow only please. The selection on NewEgg is simply staggering and I don't know where to begin, and would also rather purchase something that someone else has used and is pleased with.
I'd like to squeeze another year out of this machine and hold out for Hexa Core i7, DX11 and 6-12GB DDR3 RAM goodness.
I used to use an old Zalman GPU cooler on a 6800 GT I had 3-4 years ago, it was quieter and definitely more effective than the built in coolers of the time, although it also took up more space. If my cooler went out and I didn't want to actually just replace the video card I'd go for another Zalman all copper unit. I still have the heatsink and I'd probably be using it but it has no RAM cooling on it and I'm pretty sure my 8800 GT needs RAM cooling.
On the other hand if your card is PCIe and the cooler you are looking at costs $50 or more you should probably skip it and get a 9800 GT or 9800 GTX+ which come in at about $90 retail for better than double the performance of a 7950 GT. The other bonus using a newer part is even if your CPU isn't up to snuff, you can con your computer into decoding blu-ray if you buy a copy of CoreAVC and use its CUDA support to accelerate the decoding. Either that or ebay an 8800 GT (XFX cards have lifetime warranties that can be transferred, make sure you get that).
Yeah that looks good, just make sure you have sufficient clearance in your case since these coolers are bigger than they look on paper.
Also the RAM heatsinks can be a huge pain to actually get to stick, the pads they use can come off very easily. Test fit the cooler with the RAMsinks sitting in place to make sure nothing bumps before you install them. Set the card on a flat surface with plenty of support and really push them down onto the chips. If its too frustrating try searching for some more decent thermal tape which will probably give better results.
As a last resort if they still come off then use thermal epoxy or something similar to more permanently and securely stick them on. (If you ever need to get the epoxy off the old freezer + razorblade trick should probably get it to release.)
The selection on NewEgg is simply staggering and I don't know where to begin, and would also rather purchase something that someone else has used and is pleased with.
