9500 Pro o/c'd @ 360/300 w/ stock cooling... worth it to buy VGA cooler and ramsinks?

[Donatron]

Preparing for Doom3, so I'm upgrading my computer as best I can without spending an arm and a leg.....

AtiTool maxed my card out at 370/310, but I tuned it down 10mHz for both cuz 3DMark2001 crashed at 370/310.... At 360/300 it runs smoothly.. not artifacts, and no crashes....

o/cing gave raised my score from 12000 to 13000.... I also bought some new RAM, so I'll be upgrading from 512MB DDR333 to 1GB DDR400, plus I'll be able to o/c my Athlon 2500+ to 3200+ specs.... That should improve my scores even more...

But anyways, what kind of gains could I expect by buying a VGA cooler and Ramsinks??... Is it enough to justify the cost?.. I know it won't cost too much... But at the same time, if the difference isn't really noticeable, then it's still a waste of money...

If anything, I was thinking of getting them just to allow the card to run cooler... Is this really necessary, or is the stock cooling more than enough?...

As far as the Ramsinks... can I just desolder the power supply lead, and resolder it on the back, so that it isn't in the way of the memory?... also, what size heatsinks should I get??....

[The Coolest]

Preparing for Doom3, so I'm upgrading my computer as best I can without spending an arm and a leg.....

AtiTool maxed my card out at 370/310, but I tuned it down 10mHz for both cuz 3DMark2001 crashed at 370/310.... At 360/300 it runs smoothly.. not artifacts, and no crashes....

o/cing gave raised my score from 12000 to 13000.... I also bought some new RAM, so I'll be upgrading from 512MB DDR333 to 1GB DDR400, plus I'll be able to o/c my Athlon 2500+ to 3200+ specs.... That should improve my scores even more...

But anyways, what kind of gains could I expect by buying a VGA cooler and Ramsinks??... Is it enough to justify the cost?.. I know it won't cost too much... But at the same time, if the difference isn't really noticeable, then it's still a waste of money...

If anything, I was thinking of getting them just to allow the card to run cooler... Is this really necessary, or is the stock cooling more than enough?...

I've seen Rad9500Pros hit 390 on the core or maybe a bit more on better cooling, but I think that unless you're gonna be doing volt mods, better cooling will probably allow your GPU to go upto around 400MHz.

As far as the Ramsinks... can I just desolder the power supply lead, and resolder it on the back, so that it isn't in the way of the memory?... also, what size heatsinks should I get??....

If you have the requiered soldering skills then I think its possible, but if you do it, make absolutely sure you're orienting the connector the correct way, so you don't put +5v to the +12v line and +12v to the +5v line on the card, or you could just fry it instantly.

I guess you could use a Socket A heatsink and cut down some Pentium heatsink to 8 pieces to fit on the RAM. That's if you want to be a DIYer.
If you don't mind buying a new cooler the one that I've seen most people buy is the Arctic VGA silencer (or something like that), and there are lots of different places that sell RAM sinks in kits

[Needitcooler]

My old 9500 would hit 390 on the core with stock cooling. I upgraded the cooling and put ramsinks on and gained a whole 5 mhz on the core and nothing on the memory. From a monetary perspective it was a huge waste of money since I spent about $30 for no performance increase. I did have fun modding that card and it looked pretty cool when I was done, so I guess it was worth it. Good luck.