normally my system is fairly quiet. recently it's been quite noisy, and the culprit is the video card's stock fan. i'm not quite sure what's wrong but there are intemittent rattling noises, so i thought it may be time to change it. what would u guys suggest?

I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't recommend one of our Raven coolers. It might be a bit pricey for your older 9700, but it will be dead silent, and will work with very little air-flow. Do you have a rear case fan? If so, then the Raven may be the perfect solution.

Here are the details:
http://www.aero-case.com/raven_data.html

Happy cooling,
SG

The 9600 pro produces very little heat. A simple passive heatsink from a motherboard northbridge will work just fine. If you open the pci slot below the card it will keep the gpu cool. No offense to StealthGirl but the Raven is hugely overkill.

Opps ... now how did I read this as a 9700? Autoboy, your are right. Yes, the 9600 is very easily cooled and you can do so for under $10. An old CPU heatsink (screwed on or glued on with Arctic Silver Adhesive) will work just great.

Hmm, I'm trying to do the same thing.
Can someone else confirm that a simple heat sink will do the job?
Doesn't the card already ahve a heat sink (how else would the fan be of any use)?

I'm quite quietly pleased with the Aerocool VM-101 on my 9600 Pro. It has been discontinued, but still available.

I like it enough that I bought a second one to modify.

Wow. That thing looks cool.
I'll probably get it. It would be cool if someone could confirm/reject the heatsink solution though.