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Has anyone tried it?

There is no way that plastic "shell" is helping airflow over the heatsink. I have a big box fan cooling my rig and it just pushes the air around the cards, I think it would be more efficient to push that air over the heatsink instead of just relying on the heatsink fan. Its only a couple screws to take the plastic shell off of these sapphires I have.

What do you guys think?

It sort of depends.  If you have a reference card like this one:

http://pcper.com/images/reviews/788/01.jpg

then the plastic does help, the hot air really only comes out of the the end farthest from the fan, but if you have something else (like most of the sapphires (I have a few)) then the plastic probably isn't doing much.  The only real way to find out would be to remove it and see what happens.

http://www.pureoverclock.com/wp-content/uploads/images/review/video_cards/sapphire_7950oc/sapphire_7950oc_4.jpg

Thats what mine looks like, heat comes out from every side.

Another idea I had was to take off the fans on the cards also and use a big squirlcage fan to push alot of air over them, more than a box fan ever could. lol

it's up to your HSF design, sometimes that shell acts like a duct forcing air to move through the metal fins of the heatsink other designs it's  purely cosmetic, your particular card looks like you might not notice any difference shroud or not.

I'm thinking that we need someone to conduct a Fluid and Thermo Dynamics course here. :-\

Who wants to donate the GPU for underwater testing? :P

I always remove useless plastic and fans and removing back plate sometimes helps to cool down cards.
Any high performance 2x120mm fans always better.

No, no, no! The casing is there for a reason, it directs airflow. Its like having a girl lick your generic crotch area, she can lick all she wants but its not going to do much.

And the backplate, why on earth would you remove that? = slight cooling, but more importantly keeps the contact good and the card straight.

If you have the double fans the plastic doesn't do much. The single fan cards usually need it to direct airflow properly. Still depends on the heatsink/heatpipe design. YMMV.

One way to look at it, a manufacturer will jump through hoops to reduce the cost of production. Why would they bare the cost of useless plastic?

On cards like the sapphire 7950, cosmetics. Cosmetics stuff is a lot. I think.

This. They want it to look expensive.

I have a cheap powercolor AX7950 with a single fan in the middle of the card.  Temps on the card were a constant 85+ at 100% fan when mining with a "normal" overclock.  Since removeing the plastic housing temps have dropped to 75 on average and I can reduce the fan speed down to 70%.  I have concluded the shroud is merely there to look shiny.

I have a sapphire with a single fan that sits at 70 degrees with 70% fan.

I think quality of the card plays a lot into how well the cooling shroud is supposed to work.  Key example is the Sapphire has a heatsink on the vram and an offset fan.  The Powercolor card has no heatsink on the vram and the fan is located in the center of the card.  

What are your VRAM temps? You might want to stick a few ramsinks on there.

I wonder if this would make a diff on the Sapphire cards.  I'm curious if anyone has done it, though I imagine it wouldn't get the same results as a reference card that is very enclosed.

There is only one temp sensor on this card and it shows at the above temps mentioned.  I've adapted a small case fan to blow on VRAM now that the crappy shroud is out of the way.

Yeah. Damn it! I had a Sapphire 7950, and that would've been a perfect test candidate.

That also works. :)

Leave the plastic on them put a box fan pulling the heat off the card into the room. you will get better results pulling air off the cards than you will pushing it to them unless you can push cold air to the intake fan of the card then you would be golden.

LOL remove the plastic...
It's just like water only it flows upwards.....



Like this........ a new rig just finished

https://i.imgur.com/eSxAf0V.jpg

Maybe I should add some plastic to actually DIRECT the fans over the heatinks

I did the same to my HIS reference 7950, same as your AX7950. The temperature dropped from 82 to 76c.

I did not try on my Sapphire 7950 as the temperature is just 70c.