For some backstory, take a look at my ModsRigs page and/or my thread in the ModsRigs forum; I promise it will be amusing and add a bit more to the story... 
 
I'm new, so I can't post pics or links, so I'll try to be a bit more verbose to make up for it...  I placed one (bad) pic as #6 on my ModsRigs page and it shows a bit of what I did, sort of... 
 
(Mods, I promise I'm not a spammer, please upgrade me so I can post links) 
 
Either way, like with most everything that I do; if you plan on doing this yourself, do note that I take no respinsibility for you turning your rig into a Fire Breathing BSOD maker...  If you're careful, the likelyhood is really quite minimal, but again, it's all up to you as results may vary...
 
I've been working with this GTS 450 card as it's basically all this current PC setup will handle (for many reasons, again, read my previous ModsRigs build post) but something that was annoying me about this particular card (newer GF116 rev.) was it's inability to overclock the Mem Clock as far as it's GF106 predecessor; my initial theory was that the GF106 model used Samsung K4G10325FE-HC05 chips but the newer GF116 model uses Hynix H5GQ1H24AFR-T0C chips and I just figure they didn't like to push as far (maybe cheaper to purchase or something, not blaming EVGA, it's a bargain model card)...  Either way, I figured that I would dig in and figure out a solution to cool things off a bit, hopefully buying me a few extra cycles... 
 
As I took a look at things I realized that this was going to be a bit rougher than I had initially imagined as four of the eight chips were covered up by the VGPU heatsink; so I needed to figure out a way to cool them as much as possible without having them actually touch the main heatsink as the heat being generated on that block would be way worse for the RAM than just leaving them naked...  What I eventually came up with was to rip apart an old notebook heatpipe and radiator end and then take two of the radiator strips and place them to each of the RAM chips via double sided heat tape; this still gave me a bit of clearance between it and the VGPU heatsink and in theory also created a small venturi for air to pass over and through each chip keeping things cooler. 
 
So, I figured that while I was at it that I should go ahead and heatsink the Voltage Regulators as well as since I am pushing the voltage from the stock 1.012 to 1.150v that I was probably creating a bit of heat on that front as well...  This again proved to be a bit more difficult then it was with the original rev. GTS450 because on that model the VREG's were all in a row so a standard rectangle 'generic standard stock' heatsink would have covered them easily, but on the newer model they placed a few of the VREG's farther away (making a semi-third row) and also placed a few good zise resistors and a large capacitor in their path, so I had to dremel out a custom sink (not a big deal, but it was another 45 minutes of measuring and cutting - again, bargain model, I forgive you EVGA)...
 
Once it was all done I slapped it all back together and put it through it's paces; overall I am quite impressed with the results!  Previously I was only able to clock 1095 Core /1826 Mem, but I am now able to push the MemClk up to 2033 with full stability!  Now, I find it hard to believe that the small amount of copper I placed on each chip actually let me push the clock ~210mhz. farther simply on it's own (maybe they also helped block the heat coming from the VGPU?); but I almost have to believe that cooling off the VREG's had some hand in this as well...  I do notice that when I touch their heatsinks while at full load that the blocks are actually somewhat warm, so I have a feeling that I may have been getting small amounts of ripple previous caused from higher temps...
 
Conclusions:  Throw some heatsinks on your RAM and VREG's!  Whatever card you're using!  If you have the room, use something better than I did, but even if you don't just keep in mind that anything is better than nothing; a few ounces of copper bought me an extra ~700 points in 3DMark Vantage! 
 
(as soon as I can post links/pics I will circle back on this and give everyone some visuals)  :)
 
More to come...  Next stop is some better custom cooling for the heatsink; and since I'm voltage handicapped with this rig fans are not an option so I'm formulating something rather creative. 
 
BlkHole

blkhole

For some backstory, take a look at my ModsRigs page and/or my thread in the ModsRigs forum; I promise it will be amusing and add a bit more to the story... 

I'm new, so I can't post pics or links, so I'll try to be a bit more verbose to make up for it...  I placed one (bad) pic as #6 on my ModsRigs page and it shows a bit of what I did, sort of... 

(Mods, I promise I'm not a spammer, please upgrade me so I can post links) 

Either way, like with most everything that I do; if you plan on doing this yourself, do note that I take no respinsibility for you turning your rig into a Fire Breathing BSOD maker...  If you're careful, the likelyhood is really quite minimal, but again, it's all up to you as results may vary...

I've been working with this GTS 450 card as it's basically all this current PC setup will handle (for many reasons, again, read my previous ModsRigs build post) but something that was annoying me about this particular card (newer GF116 rev.) was it's inability to overclock the Mem Clock as far as it's GF106 predecessor; my initial theory was that the GF106 model used Samsung K4G10325FE-HC05 chips but the newer GF116 model uses Hynix H5GQ1H24AFR-T0C chips and I just figure they didn't like to push as far (maybe cheaper to purchase or something, not blaming EVGA, it's a bargain model card)...  Either way, I figured that I would dig in and figure out a solution to cool things off a bit, hopefully buying me a few extra cycles... 

As I took a look at things I realized that this was going to be a bit rougher than I had initially imagined as four of the eight chips were covered up by the VGPU heatsink; so I needed to figure out a way to cool them as much as possible without having them actually touch the main heatsink as the heat being generated on that block would be way worse for the RAM than just leaving them naked...  What I eventually came up with was to rip apart an old notebook heatpipe and radiator end and then take two of the radiator strips and place them to each of the RAM chips via double sided heat tape; this still gave me a bit of clearance between it and the VGPU heatsink and in theory also created a small venturi for air to pass over and through each chip keeping things cooler. 

So, I figured that while I was at it that I should go ahead and heatsink the Voltage Regulators as well as since I am pushing the voltage from the stock 1.012 to 1.150v that I was probably creating a bit of heat on that front as well...  This again proved to be a bit more difficult then it was with the original rev. GTS450 because on that model the VREG's were all in a row so a standard rectangle 'generic standard stock' heatsink would have covered them easily, but on the newer model they placed a few of the VREG's farther away (making a semi-third row) and also placed a few good zise resistors and a large capacitor in their path, so I had to dremel out a custom sink (not a big deal, but it was another 45 minutes of measuring and cutting - again, bargain model, I forgive you EVGA)...

Once it was all done I slapped it all back together and put it through it's paces; overall I am quite impressed with the results!  Previously I was only able to clock 1095 Core /1826 Mem, but I am now able to push the MemClk up to 2033 with full stability!  Now, I find it hard to believe that the small amount of copper I placed on each chip actually let me push the clock ~210mhz. farther simply on it's own (maybe they also helped block the heat coming from the VGPU?); but I almost have to believe that cooling off the VREG's had some hand in this as well...  I do notice that when I touch their heatsinks while at full load that the blocks are actually somewhat warm, so I have a feeling that I may have been getting small amounts of ripple previous caused from higher temps...

Conclusions:  Throw some heatsinks on your RAM and VREG's!  Whatever card you're using!  If you have the room, use something better than I did, but even if you don't just keep in mind that anything is better than nothing; a few ounces of copper bought me an extra ~700 points in 3DMark Vantage! 

(as soon as I can post links/pics I will circle back on this and give everyone some visuals)  :)

More to come...  Next stop is some better custom cooling for the heatsink; and since I'm voltage handicapped with this rig fans are not an option so I'm formulating something rather creative. 

BlkHole

 
you said you were hanicapped to not adding fans...What about getting a fan controller??

Ugh...  Still no access to add pics, whatever...  Use your imagination or something... 
 
Anyways, thought I'd share how I just milked my Vantage score up another ~450 for a few bucks and an hour in the garage... 
 
The stock/reference fan on most current Nvidia cards is the AVC DASA0815R2U, it's a custom 75x75x15 unit with a 0.60a draw and a max RPM of ~4200...  All things considered a very good fan, but for ~$5 at an electronics store you can purchase and mod an AVC DASA0820R2U unit, it's a more common to find/purchase 80x80x20 still with a 0.60a draw and a max RPM of ~4550.
 
So, what I did was cut the new fan out of it's square shroud so that it looked like it's smaller brother, the next problem though was that the screw holes did not match up since the new unit came in a shroud and didn't have any, but not to fear (again, this is where I need links or photos) as since both units are AVC the backing plates are the exact same and can be swapped out!   

Once I realized this I knew that I was home free, so once the fan was mounted back on the heatsink I then cut off the speed control wire on the fan, and although I ran the RPM sensor wire back to it's stock connector I decided to run the voltage wires up and over direct to the +12v connectors at the back of the card on the 6pin PCI-E snap-in as I was tired of the silly 70% max fan speed (again, you'll need to look at your card to visualize, or maybe one day I'll be allowed to post pics and I'll insert some)...
 
Once I did both of these quickie mods, my card runs a bit cooler at idle and can take more abuse before heating up!  I do not have the stock plastic ferrings on the outside of my card due to size limitations of my machine (look @ my ModsRigs) but I would imagine that you could shave 5mm circular off of the sides of the fan hole, and so long as you had ~5mm of extra room between the top of the card and your next peripheral you would be just fine! 
 
I'll clean up the card and post a current pic of it on to my ModsRigs page so that you can see what I've done...  It will make the unit a bit louder, but if performance on a tight budget is your primary goal then I have so far taken this card from the 822 Core / 1804 mem @ 1.012 stock speed to 1098 Core / 2052 Mem @ 1.150v with less than $6 total investment so far...  I know it isn't a crazy SLI/Watercooled setup, but if you're a poor gamer like me cheap performance is good performance! 
 
(mods - please give me photo/link access...  I'm a tech guy, not a chat guy, so 50 posts are going to take me a bit)
 
Thx!

I won't lie I am confused as hell to your computer specs. I notice your pushing the 450 to crazy lengths.. I don't understand what your cpu speed is at is that really set to 3293ghz? God thats 3200 more Ghz faster then mine. If I am wrong here sorry I am new to all this technology.
 
But even with what your using I feel really low on the totem poll with my pc for I have a gtx560, amd quad core at 2.9ghz and so far my 3dmark11 score is only like 3000 LOL. Pretty friggin low eh?
 
EDIT: Wow sorry just realized your score is from 3dmark Vantage. I still don't know what my Vantage score is thought because I can not get passed the CPU Test2 Crash N Burn part =(.

Cameron1234

Who are you talking to me? or blkhole?

 
Blkhole.. look at his CPU speed on his mod rigs.. It showed 3200 something ghz..
 
Edit: I am assuming it is a typo but who knows you guys do some crazy stuff guys..

Cameron1234

hey bro my cpu is overclocked to 3.4 ghz right now running f@h and the highest my cpu goes it 42 degrees celcius also i have 1.42 on my cpu voltage and i did have it at 3.7
Btw im on a stock cooler:D

Na I am talking about the OPS rig. Look at his mod rigs specs. Especially look at the speed of his CPU. I am assuming it is a typo but is it really? 3293.1Ghz cpu speed? Is that even possible?

Cameron1234

Yeah it's completly possible it's an i3 by intel, intels are known for being able to overclock really well

I think you are missing the point... 3293.1Ghz vs 3293.1Mhz

ok so thats where my confusion exploded. I didnt know if he mad a typo or if he was really trying to throw those specs on his page..

blkhole

haha, my bad, fixed. 

 
heh cool. Sorry to have made a big deal about it I just honestly didn't know whether or not that was possible. I am rather new to the overclocking of the pc world and have no clue how far you can take things. It would be crazy sick if you could push a cpu to 3293.1ghz. That itself would probably become a flame thrower =P..
 
EDIT: I must add this computer build is actually inspiring. Not that I would try it because I don't have much experience with anythign you would need to do this however I am basically in the same boat as you. I am a poor man gamer and love to game with awesome fps. In my opinion I have a great rig for what I do but I want it to be the best it can be so I have been making simple modifications to it. Nothing getting cut but just adding fans and what not where fans shouldnt be.. It is actually fun to take apart and put back together this pc.

The card as of now:
 

Sir send me diagrams so I can do this