[cantankerous]

I can vouche for the above. I installed my X2 a couple days ago. It is absolutely DEAD silent. I don't even think a dog's accute hearing could pick up this fan running, even at 100%. I get between 40-42c idle and at max 68c depending on what I'm doing. This cooler is doing great on this card. With my stock fan at 82% I would still hit 75c. I dropped a good 8-10c idle and 5-7c full load with the X2. This thing is for sure staying on my card. I have never really noticed a change from cure time on any thermal pastes I have applied but we will see what happens with this install. I used ceramique on the core and am hoping for another 1-2c drop when it cures. It has only been 2 days, a far cry from the 200 hours it says it needs to properly cure. My temps on my chipset are surprisingly not bad even with the worry of the hot air from the video card being dumped onto it. I idle around 39-40c on the chipset with the stock chipset fan on my DFI Ultra-D at 4000rpm. I barely get mid 40's on the chipset under load. Mind you I am only running stock 1.5v through the chipset as I need no more to run what I am. I know the chipset gets no hotter for two reasons. To start I use systool to log my chipset temps and as well I setup the bios to speed up the fan on the chipset to the full 7000rpm only after the chipset exceeds 50c. The fan never kicks up so all is good. I have a 120mm panaflo M1A on the side of my case over the video card and chipset area so I am sure that helps. The fan is running at 5V via my Vantec Nexus controller. I also removed all PCI brackets under the video card and replaced them with the slotted brackets I have been collecting from all my other ATI Silencers over the past couple years. The real test is going to be how this cooler holds up during the hot summer months which are yet to come. I get about 22+c ambient temps in this room now but they get much higher in the mid summer so I am expecting the card to get a bit hotter than it is now but nothing too worrying. As mentioned above I used to get 75c full load with the fan at 82%. I told myself I would be happy with the X2 if it does the same 75c, no more than that but with dead silence. I think I should be just fine.