Video Card Casing

[carickw]

A lot of the higher end cards come in plastic cases. To me this would seem to make the cooling worse and I am wondering a couple of things. Why do they do this? Does it improve anything? Also I see a couple of screws on the bottom of the PCB and if it is just that easy to take it off/replace it because to install an aftermarket cooler it would have to be removed.

 

[xc0mmiex]

plastic cases on videocards are usually are used to funnel the air outside the case or some specific direction... they don't cool but guide the air...as you can see the cards that do have that usually dump their out of the case, others do not. Yes... to replace the hsf on your video you just unscrew and replace with another (but you only want to do that if you have cooling problems)... well ofcourse don't forget the thermal compound etc, hope u know what i mean,otherwise just stick with the stock