Gamer's Nexus does a lot of hybrid mod for GPU testing and he mentioned that the VRAM and VRM can do without active cooling. So far I have no experience any frame drop of throttling in long stresstest.
By default, the Dark Rock TF runs as a Push-Pull configuration, by taking off 1 fan I'n not really dinking it's performance by much. If you go look up push/pull vs push vs pull, you'll notice that the performance usually doesn't differ by a huge amount (and to me, 2x fan just outperform 1 fan ...
In the quest for smaller and better cooling, I've got an idea to utilize 2X Noctua d15 air coolers for both the GPU & CPU. I have seen a few vids on CPU air coolers being used on GPU with great success. I believe it's just not that popular because it doesn't look very good and you end up not...