I pulled the heatsink fan off of my 5970 to put some MX-2 on the chips. Every time I see this thing it reminds me of how much I can't stand it. If you have a 5970 you know how loud, obnoxious and inefficient it is, almost as though it was trying to mess with your head. "That's right, I do an awful job of cooling your expensive GPUs and I'll be glad to remind you of that every second of the day with the dull roar of my seemingly-contradictory low-CFM high-decibel noise wheel!"
Anyway, I'm looking at this thing and the copper heatsink underneath all the plastic seems like a good starting point. After all, not many heatsinks are even out there for dual-GPU cards. Maybe strap one or two high CFM 120mm fans onto it. Unlike the stock fan, something that would actually push the air through the copper fins. Or draw the air away from it. Or both? All I know is that this card sits at 90C in its current state so bringing that max temp under load down would definitely be worth the time. Aside from that, the only other thing to address would be the memory chips on both sides of the board, but I don't see why you couldn't stick those little copper heatsinks on each of them.
5970 owners, any thoughts?
I started with 3 of the 'new' 5970 cards that have been available lately.. I was actually surprised how cool they run for me.
out of the 6 I clock most of them at 880/440, one I have to keep at stock or that card crashes. they stay at a constant low 70's.
I noticed that all of the warm air comes out the front of the card, so I positioned a fan behind the machine to get fresh air flow from behind the open rig.
I just bot 4 more of these, should get them Fri. I will have a 8 gpu rig on a 1200 watt silverstone.