Sooo...has anyone found any advantage in running the cards with, say, the shroud removed?  Quieter?  Cooler?

I took the shrouds off of my 460s, mainly just for looks. I didn't notice much of a temp drop but I run a skeleton case so they were already getting plenty of cool air anyway. I think I noticed they were a little quieter without the shrouds.

 

Dont overclock the card and keep the fans at 55% or lower. Or keep your overclock and buy a 120mm fan to mount in front of the card so it blows air across it to keep temps down. Graphics card fans are always louder because they're high rpm fans that ramp up past 3000rpm at 100%.
 
There's always water cooling if noise bothers you that much.

I actually *do* have a 120mm fan in the side of the case blowing basically 'over' the 560 Ti.
 
Only thing is - with the shroud in place - I'm not thinking it's actually contributing much to the cooling, other than bringing in cool air directly from the outside to the GPU fan area (rather than the only source being air pulled in from the front of the case).
 
I suppose that would be another argument in favor of removing the shroud - the 120mm fan would be blowing directly on the HSF (from the side), then...
 
(As to watercooling - nah, that's an even larger investment that just replacing the stock HSF with a Zalman or Arctic Cooling unit.  I'd *like* to find the most economical way of optimizing what I've got.  And, really, I don't object much to the HSF design - even with the shroud.  Just wish they had used a larger...or quieter, anyway...fan...)

Think I'll give that a shot, tonight.
 
At the moment - stock clocks and settings - the eVGA precision tool says I have:
- 45% fan speed (auto set) for ~1800-1900 rpm
- 900 mhz core
- 1800 mhz shader clock
- 2106 mhz ram
- ~74C GPU temps
 
...this as a result of 100% load (with 100% CPU load, too - folding away!) for something like a dozen hours.
 
I'll take the shroud off tonight, and see what happens...

Cards?  Plural?  I only have a single Geforce 560 Ti.  Only other thing in the system is an X-Ti Titanium, but it's several slots down.  The 120mm intake from the side is blowing pretty much down both cards (the top of the 120mm fan is basically aligned with the highest point on the CPU, and the soundcard is visible through it just at the bottom).

Well, I just popped the shroud off.  Booted into Windows and fired up Folding@Home, again, and after a few minutes...
 
...well, it turns out that, without the shroud, the GPU runs a good 5C *hotter* for any given fan RPM.  So...that's interesting.  I guess, with the stock fan, the ducting it arranges for around the heatsink fins accounts for a significant amount of its cooling power.
 
So, that seems like a dead end, there.  (FWIW, it may have been quieter - or maybe not.  Too hard to tell, so apparently not enough to really make a difference)