I have a Sapphire HD4850 with the reference design which the fan died recently. I also have a number of Intel and AMD stock coolers. Google has been no real help, but I'm curious if I can figure out how to mount it, could an Intel stock cooler for socket 1150 or the stock cooler for an A8 6600K be enough?
I too have a Sapphire HD 4850. Yes. I think the stock Intel/AMD CPU "fan" is more than sufficient to keep your card cool. I recommend connecting it to a separate fan header and NOT mod your fan's wires and connect it to the 2 pin fan connector on the card.
Although(I'm guessing), I don't think you could use Intel's stock heat sink on the card. I doubt the copper baseplate on Intel's heatsink will properly sit on the RV770 GPU, once the card is installed on the motherboard.
If you are putting the card in a normal computer case, then I think the AMD CPU's stock heatsink is too heavy and will make the card sag.
I have a loud HD 4670 I wonder if I could mount an old intel cooler onto that to make it quite only problem is that the cooler is heavy. How would I avoid it sagging?
You could hold it up with brackets.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102770
just get an 80 mm fan (that actually moves a decent amount of air and zip tie it after removing the stock fan.
and also replace tim with artic silver or mx-4
youll see a nice 10 degree difference from when the fan worked
HD 5870 Stock heatsink, random fan from frys. Used for mining. 88 C max temp. I have 2 of these and both their fans died.
Ok I did the mod, but no vrm cooling yet...
Just on small hitch.... I tried to slot it in a motherboard.... no go.. need 2 slots clearance, so either a riser is needed or need to shave the bottom side of the cooler... but there is our answer
The problem with using a non purpose built cooler is that it will not cool components such as the VRM and RAM
For example, here is a article showing issues with using a liquid cooler designed for a CPU, on the videocard.
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/NZXT-Kraken-G10-Review-527/
This is likely to get worst on a standard air cooler as the heat from the heatsink, is being vented directly onto the RAM, and VRM's
This issue will also get worst on lower end high wattage cards, as they use fewer power phases, and thus by default, run them at a higher duty cycle.
Most lower cost VRM's lack any built in thermal sensing and thus do not have a thermal cutoff, and will continue to run well above their recommended max temperature, and the issue with it shows up as a significantly reduce lifespan of the component.