So i finally got around to mod my vidcard. I exchanged the stock fan/heatsink on my Sapphire 9600XT 256 with an old heatsink from a P133. The P133 heatsink is from a ICL/Fujitsu system, where the cpu was passively cooled. I glued it on with arctic silver epoxy and left it for a couple of hours to cure. After testing with a few hours of CS I can say that the heatsink get warm, but not hot. The 256 mb version of the card is clocked slightly lower on the ram than the stadart 128 mb version, but it not different in any other way.
So now I'm the happy owner of a truely silent GPU.
Passively cooled 9600XT mod
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Well, no. Cause I don't play any real graphic intensive games, until HL2 arrives. Anyhow if I have done it properly then I don´t expect there to be either, since the stock cooling solution is really crappy as you write. I suspect that there is only a fan on this card because costumers expect there to beone on such a card. The heatsink is so flimsy and the fan is not really doing a lot of work, so with a serious heatsink I doubt it. If done right, you can always put a 50 mm fan on the heatsink and run it at 30%. That should be way better than the stock solution and almost silent.