Best FAN+HEATSINK for a 9600pro

theDUD3

Guys, is the Powercolor 9600pro Bravo Edition's fan adequate for overclocking? If not what's the best FAN+HEATSINK replacement you would recommend?

Thanks!

MK____

I have a Vantec Iceberg 4 Premium installed on my 9600 PRO. It's so much larger (and heavier because it's all copper) than the stock cooler it's almost overkill, but gives awesome cooling (the back of the card behind the GPU isn't warm at all, even OC'd 100mhz and in the middle of running 3dMark). Looks great, too, with the blue LEDs inside.

There's one leeettle problem with that cooler, though - it does need a modification done to it before installing. Even though it claims to fit the 9600-series cards, the lower portion of the heat sink body extends down below the socket line at the connector - in other words, it won't allow the card to fully seat into the AGP socket the way it comes out of the box. (The reason, I suspect, is that 9600 cards have their GPU mounted lower than the other ATI series, probably something they didn't anticipate.)

What I did to it is first measure where the top of the socket comes to on the card, then mount the Vantec and measure how much I'd have to take off the bottom (I added a little over 1mm to the socket level, just to make sure). I marked the level on either side of the base, then removed it and drew a straight line to connect the marks across the rear with a marker. There's not a lot needed to remove - about 1/4" at the widest point.

Then it was time to get the trusty grinder out and get to work. I considered using a hacksaw, and could have, but the grinder seemed easier. One thing I found out, though - when using a grinder, have it rotating from the fins toward the base as you grind, and start from the fin side. Otherwise, as soon as the grinder bit hits the thin fins it tends to bend and mangle them. I had to straighten 4 or 5 back out before I found the right technique. (Going that direction helps avoid slips that might damage the mounting surface of the heat sink, as well.)
After the grinder got the worst of it removed, it just needed a bit of filing and cleaning up (and straightening a few fins to get them evened back up.)

I also went ahead and modded the fan cable so it would plug into the card's connector instead of using a power supply plug adapter - I clipped off the wires to about the stock fan's wire length, then crimped some individual mini-Molex female pins to the power and ground wires and protected each one with a short piece of heat shrink tubing. So rather than using a plug, each wire plugs individually onto its connector pin on the card. (The sensor wire got clipped short, but I left enough to re-lengthen it later.)

I think it was worth the extra effort to get it installed. Along with some OCZ BGA copper RAM sinks, it makes the card look really nice, and provides more than enough cooling.