VGA cooler for the whole card

[taq8ojh]

I've used 3rd party coolers for my graphic cards for years, but never ever found any that would reliably cool the VRMs as well. I always had to do some funky stuff and mess around with questionable results.
It always amazed me how noone thought it would be a good idea to create such heatsink that would cover not just a GPU. Those damn VRMs can easily hit 120°C (on my current card at least).

I intend to grab a 7970 later this year, and expect it to last me some 4 years again (I currently have 5850 and am still almost perfectly happy with it), so it's time to check alternative cooling possibilities.
Has anything changed in the industry, or will I have to do voodoo again? Is there any cooler that does what I want? Watercooling is out of question, unfortunately, I don't like it (but I did see a block that does exactly what I talk about).

 

[T_Yamamoto]

I'm not familiar with old school GPUs and their third party counterparts but the recent third party coolers include vram heatsinks that keep then relatively cool.

 

[taq8ojh]

Do you mean those ridiculous little heatsinks for individual chips? I always found those absolutely useless.
If you mean something completely different, please, throw me a link!

 

[dma0991]

I know you've said it but

Spoiler

water is the only way that will give you the best results

.

 

[Zap]

Watercooling is out of question, unfortunately, I don't like it (but I did see a block that does exactly what I talk about).

Those full coverage blocks are expensive, usually costing $100-150, and are extremely limited in the supported cards. Then there is the cost of the rest of the liquid cooling gear.

Do you mean those ridiculous little heatsinks for individual chips? I always found those absolutely useless.
If you mean something completely different, please, throw me a link!

fan bracket which can be used with any Asetek made AIO closed loop liquid cooler which you can occasionally find for really cheap. Use the bracket with a 92mm fan to cool those "ridiculous little heatsinks" and you'll have pretty darn good performance.

 

[taq8ojh]

Oh, well, I thought more like a bigger heatsink of some sort. I tend to avoid extra fans if I can help it.

Zalman used to make such things for older cards. This is pretty close to what I have in mind:

 

[taq8ojh]

Hmm. Seems like Sapphire cards come with some sort of VRM and memory heatsinks by default:

or

It's slightly different on each model from what I can see, and it's probably impossible to find a stripped picture of each one.


This might also be what I am looking for, but finding fitting cooler would probably be major pain in the ass: http://www.swiftech.com/HD7900-HSF.aspx