I've got an XFX R7950 black edition, and I love it, it overclocks nicely and it handles almost all games reallly nice. However, I have noticed that it is easily the loudest part in my entire system. Are there any decent aftermarket air cooling solutions for GPUs that are significantly quieter?
I've thought about a custom watercooled setup, but I think it'd be more hassle than it's worth (at the moment anyway) and I don't think I've really got space for the resevoir and stuff in my Bitfenix Prodigy.
Kind of hard to answer that. It's really hard to get anything better than the custom designs GPU makers design. I know Arctic Cooling makes the Accelero custom 7970 heatsink. It has 3 fans and they're some of the best GPU fans you can possibly get. I don't know if it's quieter because XFX spends a ton of money on R&D for heatsinks, so the improvements are going to be so small that it won't be worth the value. Custom watercooling will be the best solution if you want something significant.
There are a TON of custom watercooling builds for the bitfenix prodigy. It's famous for that.
next time, check out MSI and ASUS, they tend to have the best cooling/temperature balance out of all the GPU manufacturers IMO. I've got 2 x Twin Frozr III GPU's and they only get loud when the fans spin at 80%. Also, do you have a side window/mesh window. That can change the acoustics. Another option is sound dampening material, that never hurts.