I could not get the stripped screws out... I had to cut off the columns on the cards to the very right. (in reference to the above pics) But it does not effect it at all. There's plenty of screws holding it down. I put electrical tape over the cut marks and you can barely notice it.
I cleaned it out pretty good, got like, a pound of dust out of it. Replaced the thermal paste with arctic silver 5.
Some performance figures. Ran the Unigine heaven benchmark at DX10 and the scores/fps at 1080 are:
476
Average: 18.9
min: 9.7
Max: 41.2
At 1600x900
666
average: 26.4
min: 16.5
max: 55.6
So since it only has 512mb of vRam, its better with low resolutions.
But the temps and noise are nice. With the benchmarks and playing BF3 for a match on medium, temps got to 61c, no higher.
BF3 played nicely at 1600x900 with medium settings. Very nicely at 1366x768.
Here's a pic for reference. Can barely see the electrical tape.