card casing

Im thinking of getting the new ATI 4870, but am worried about it catching the thin heat sink on my motherboard (ASUS M2N-E SLI) google it to see what i mean. I was woundering, the case on the card its self, can it be removed? or does it just serve a greater purpose other then protecting the card components?. Enclosed is a close up image of the card, you can see clearly the casing goes over the card and fan, but i do not belive the fan is attached to the casing, how ever i mite be wrong. Ive heard ya can remove the casing on some of the Nvidia 8800's....

 

Basically the case is the "whole heatsink" on the video card, covering the GPU RAM and other components;

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...deon-hd4870-512mb-graphics-card-review-8.html

The fan is encased within the heatsink compartment.

They can readily be removed and replaced with an after-market heatsink like:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835106112

But you could also remove the heatsink from the motherboard and replace that.