Better cooling = what benefits?

Good, that's the answer I wanted to hear.

If it runs cooler, maybe I'll risk running it at a higher voltage too. Nah, I won't do that... I don't want to fry my card as I probably won't be able to replace it.

I know their stock coolers are better than anyone else's but I honestly don't think their cards are worth the money. I got my X850XT for $120. Add in another $20 for the aftermarket cooler and it set me back $140 total.

HIS's best X series offering that I can find at Newegg at the moment is a factory OCed X800XL rated at 432/1000 for $291. My X850XT is exactly the same as the X800XL except that it has a stock speeds of 520/1080. The cheapest, non-factory OCed GPU they have is a X800XL at 400/980 (otherwise similar). Either way, I'd be paying more for less performance.

I don't think I've ever seen an HIS card worth the money... but then again, I'm no GPU expert.:lol: If there are some good HIS cards, point in that direction.

Yeah, I've done that. It's been getting kinda chilly here (in my dorm room in college) lately and they haven't turn on the raidators yet. One day it was freezing so I had ATI Tool display the 3D to heat up my GPU and ran Prime95 stress test... warmed up my room in 10 minutes.:lol:

Well I installed it today, using AS5 instead of the included thermal compound and noticed almost no differences in temps.

Stock cooler: 36C idle/60C load
Silencer 5: 34C idle/58C load

And then I tried to OC my GPU even further and... didn't get anything more out of it.

I was kinda of dissappointed but then I realized that the Silencer 5 makes almost no sound and it was only $20. Definitely worth the money IMO.