So I thought about replacing this ol card (Vanilla, small PCB) but instead I gave it new life, just wanted to share a few details.
 
Stock reference black box cooler is noisy as hell, and ever since I got this new Ultra wide monitor I wanted to play the games on native res. Side effect, Fan spinning like crazy, 100% and still 80/85c. Yeah i cleaned the dust out regularly.
 
Got the Arctic Mono Plus which was kind of a gamble as I could not find a single reliable source on the net about any aftermarket cooler to actually fit this card. Well if anyone is still wondering, it fits without any modification required. You can even keep the big stock heatsink that covers the VMR's on the card.
 
Only 'issue' was the new heatsink started to bend my PCB on mounting it tight, which was easily resolved by a method described here;
 

 
Another small issue was that 2 of the memory chips on the core side could only be covered about 2/3 with the memory heatsinks supplied. Oh well, better partial coverage rather than nothing. I guess it helps that these chips are on the side where the fan blows on them.
 
Other than that, my temps top out at 65c max load with 122% power limit. Thats a wild difference compared to the stock cooler hitting 80/85c with a crap ton of noise.
 
Managed to increase the memory clock by 650~mhz in afterburner, used to be able to get a measy 300.
Core clock is able to go 1200mhz ish before it knocks out, Used to be 1100mhz max before it died. Its no record or anything but at least my memory clock has effectively gone up from 1500mhz to 1800mhz now :)
 
I've yet to unlimit my powerlevel through a bios mod, but i will eventually do that.
I hope this might help someone else who might be considering an aftermarket cooler.
 
Cheers!