Cooling (E6600) Advice - Precursor to OCing

[NumberTwo]

I'll preface this post with the fact I am totaly new to building and OCing PC's. I took [H]'s advice and built my first PC back in Feb of 07. Thing runs like a champ and I now feel it's time to begin my schooling in OCing. I apologize in advance for the long post and pics.

Here's the spec's I built

Tt Armour VA8000BWS case (Replaced 2 of the stock fans with AeroCool Xtreme fans)
P5W DH Deluxe MB running BIOS version 1305
E6600 C2D w/ stock fan
Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 (PC-6400) X4 RAM
OCZ GameXStream 850W PSU
EVGA 8800 GTS 640MB GPU
Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA X2 HD's ran in RAID 0
Lite-On DVD Burner
LG DVD ROM
Sound Blaster X-FI XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro card (Not installed yet)
XP Home

I basicaly took the better part of half a day, took my time and assembled the PC. To my amazement it fired right up and has never locked up or had any issues (Aside from one of the drives failing 4 days later which Newegg took care of). I read that the MB temp on this board seems to run hot because of the sensor being very close to the SB. I found the article "Making the P5W Conroe ready" but was hesitant to remove the NB/SB and replace the stock TIM with AS5. I did use AS5 on the HSF though. Below are pics of the temps and all running Prime95 and TAT. The first time I tried running the tests, I had SpeedFan and the ASUS PC Probe II running at the same time and about 10 minutes into it, the processor read 68C. When I shut TAT off the cores went down to normal but the CPU temp stayed at 68C so I rebooted and tested with SpeedFan, then with PC Probe II. Heres the screens.



IDLE (SpeedFan & PC Probe II)

PRIME 95 BLEND TEST - ROUGHLY 8 MIN TEST (SpeedFan)

PRIME 95 IN-PLACE LARGE FFT'S TEST - ROUGHLY 15 MIN TEST (SpeedFan)

TAT TEST - ROUGHLY 10 MIN TEST (SpeedFan)

PRIME 95 IN-PLACE LARGE FFT'S TEST - ROUGHLY 8 MIN TEST (PC Probe II)

TAT TEST - ROUGHLY 9 MIN TEST (PC Probe II)

I'm trying to see if these speeds are typical of a stock cooled E6600, and what aftermarket air cooler the good people of [H] suggests for future OCing. If I could get this CPU into the low 3.x's I'd be happy. I am a gamer, but not a huge one. Along with the purchase of a new CPU cooler, I plan on removing the NB/SB sinks, replacing the TIM with AS5, removing the cheap covers and adding the Cooler Master fans to both. Also, I noticed something odd with SpeedFan. If I turn one of the variables (Speed 03) above 50%, the sensor that is working with reports an ungodly temp. I keep that variable at 37% and it sits pretty low. I tried to relabel the variables to what they correspond to but that one I havent a clue. Here's two pictures of what I mean

Again, sorry for the long post and I appreciate the help I have received from this site and hopefully the help I'll get from this post.

 

[NumberTwo]

Wow, no suggestions at all?

 

[brysig228]

anything is better than the stock cooler.. i have the zalman 9500 and it idles at 22c and between 48c to 53c underload overclocked at 3.3.

 

[NumberTwo]

I was originally looking at the 7700, but like the look and clearance/configuration of the 9500/9700 better. So the temps Im at now seem to be OK for stock?

 

[Nanan]

I am getting along with the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme and a Scythe fan just great. Max load with prime95 the hottest core never broke 45c at 3.6ghz, with the clocking down to 3.2 it never goes over 34c, idle for both is around 24c.

Speedfan and Asus boards doesn't seem to mix, it says my NB is 198c at all times, me thinks not as the solder would be melting at those temps, it is warm prob in the 45c range with the 40mm fan I paper clipped to it.

 

[NumberTwo]

Some OC/Cooling forum. Great suggestions. Dont hesistate people.

 

[PATSCRU]

You're temps seem pretty normal, your load temps seem rather high for being so close to stock speeds, but i can't even recall what good load temps are for stock speeds cause it's been so long since I've been at stock...as far as HSF, any good aftermarket HSF is a great investment....a $50 got me a full GHz of OC, so it's more than worth it....there are plenty top-tier HSF's to consider...including the Tuniq Tower 120, the Thermalright U-120 and some of the Scythe HSF's....the only problem with these fans is that while they cool extremely well, some of them can be a pain in the ass to install.

Hope it helps...