7950 GX2 fans wondering if i can install some other brand

You can install aftermarket fans, so long as they're the same HEIGHT as the original fans. If you go any larger, it'll fit the bottom card just fine, but will NOT fit the top card.

There's word of a waterblock that can work with these cards; the name eludes me right now.

Honestly, if you're not going to overclock it, I'd stick with the stock HSF's. All these companies (BFG, XFX, Evga, Asus, Gigabyte) have a reputation to uphold, and I don't think they want to loose big money on a high-end products.

I've got the Evga 7950GX2, and I'm very happy with it, BTW. It's a power-hungry card, about the same as two 7900GT's. Driver support is sketchy at best (not officially supported by Nvidia), but the supplied drivers work great in XP 32-bit. The only manufacturer's drivers I could find that work in XP 64-bit was Asus.

From Aqua-Computer. I'd never heard of these people before, but that shows how much I know. Their site looks pretty professional, though mostly in German, of course. The breadth of their product range is quite impressive, no dinky "one size fits all" VGA coolers to be found here!

Their 7950GX2 block isn't shipping yet, but if anyone gets one when it does appear (should be shipping in the next week apparently), I'd love to hear how easy it is to attach to the card. It seems obvious that you'll need to take the two cards apart as well as get the stock HSF's off, and I'd like an idea of the difficulty involved (especially given that a mistake on this card is going to be costly...).

yeah i've been wondering the same thing, since i'm thinking about getting one of those cards for the new machine i'm going to be building.

I was on the DangerDen site the other day, and I believe I saw something about them making a 7950 WB.

im sure there is some kind of passive model out there made from heat pipes.