Not able to stand the noise of the stock cooling I tried to put a fairly big cheap (€10) socket 754 heatsink (92x92mm) on the card. I had to mill two bits out of the heatsink to make it fit, and a drill broke which is now permanently a part of the heatsink. Luckily I just had enough room for a second set of holes..

Pics:













As you can see I sandwiched a temperature sensor between the backplate and the back of the pcb. The maximum temp with stock cooling was 63c. Now, with a 120mm Nexus at ~660 RPM 'sort of' blowing over the heatsink (non ducted / very inefficient) the maximum temperature is 43! This translated in additional overclocking from 350 to 395 (325 stock). I don't have to explain that a 660rpm Nexus is a lot better to listen to than a 5000rpm 40mm screamer.

The backplate is essential and makes for a tight fit without any sort of bending of the pcb.

Big succes!

pictures are broken.
Have you tried a Vice Grip pliers to get that bit out? Unless it's in there with nothing to grab. Can't see what it looks like yet.

Its burried in the hole.. No need to get it out anyway as everything is in place and working well. I see the pics fine here btw.. not sure what is going on there.

Nice one! That heatsink looks like a big ol' beast! I got sick and tired of the fan on my 9800se AIW and modded the card so that I could fit a VF700-Cu on it. I had no idea just how noisy those little stock fans could be!

Yep...i second that one... replaced my stock cooler for my 9800 Pro with the VU700 and running it at 5v is truely unbelievable noise reduction...

However i must say that at 12v the VU700 fan does become louder but no where as loud as the stock 9800pro cooler..

I did a similar thing with a Socket 8 HS: BFG FX5200 Passive Socket 8 HS. But I don't have a working temperature probe around to check my temps.

Looks nice!

I did a similar thing with my old 9000Pro AIW, using an old stock socket A heatsink. Not as neat as yours (no access to a milling machine so I used my trusty Dremel) but does the job nicely.





Since these photos I've actually replaced my card with a 9800se AIW, which has a virtually identical layout so the heatsink was an almost direct swap (just a bit more dremelling required). Of course it runs hotter (especially as I've unlocked the other 4 pipelines!) so I've put a Panaflo in the PCI slots with a duct running from the heatsink. Kind of like a home made Arctic Silencer!

I also did mod for the 9700. I cut the wires of the stock cooler, and put a Panaflo L1A next to it, which is mounted to a PCI-slot fan holder. It's running at 7 volts and has been working for the last two and half years.