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Been meaning to post here but been busy recently........
This is the main problem, they are all different. Even same model cards by different manufactures can be different so unless you have one of every card it's impossible to make one cooler fit all version of one model let alone all 9xxx range for instance.
Yes there will be a lot that are the same when they stay strictly to the reference layout, for instance my 9700 pro cooler made for connect 3D fitted a black Sapphire 9700 pro. I have encountered makes and version differences all along when making card coolers. You have to appreciate they are not designed to make air-cooling easy let alone water-cooling.
It's something I'm not overly bothered about because if you make a block-set to fit 9800XT for example, there is no way, (even with inside information), that you'd be able to ensure it fits the next top end card from ATI. I went through a lot of this when making the prototypes for Gainward's cool FX and just a simple thing like change of cap type resulted in a ram contact issue, (short out problem), when fitted to a later card. The revisions they go through can change wildly in layout too. Another one for instance was the Gainward Ti4600 cooler... wouldn't fit the Asus Ti4600 because of an extra IC on the card.
It is extremely difficult, and is why we have only seen, "feeble attempts" by the card makers so far. it's just to costly for such a small market / card run. These are the types of things anyone wanting to make a full card cooler solution is up against and unless the card designs change significantly with a move to PCI express I don't see it getting any easier in the near future.
I guess the only other thing that might help is if the DDR3 runs blisteringly hot, then they might have to leave plenty of room for heatsink mounting around the ram chips.
To sum up:- make a cooler to fit the card you have in front of you only and if it's reference then it will most likely fit a good percentage of other makes of the exact same model. It looks like my 9800 pro (connect 3D) cooler will fit an Asus 9800XT, but I will have to mill additional relief's in the ram blocks base as they have relocated the holes near the ram and in doing so some surface mounts.
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