can i safely OC an e6600 - with very high ambient temps?

What is the ambient temp inside your house?

Those are some pretty high temps for stock speed. Those look more like what it should be on a nice Overclock. The ambient temo plays a BIG part. I know i see a 6-8C different from my room and at my buddies basement for his montly Lan party. That cooler doesn't look all that great, no offense. I would look into a much better cooler. Check out the review on Tom's and also Anantech anc pick a top performer. You are looking for something that has alot of surface area which will help you dispurs the heat better. I have the Thermalright Ultra-120 and is probably one of the best only being beat by the eXtreme edition Ultra-120. Get a good fan and you are set.

To give you an example of my setup in the winter on my cooler in my room im idleing at about 46-50C and a week the other day the temps were 85F which is about 30C my idle temps were 48-52C. And this is with my fan running at about 800-1000rpms ( i turn everything down on my fan control exept while gaming). On load with my fan at 2000RPMs I hot about 65C on 100% TAT full load. And that is with a 1.4125 vcore.

ALSO.. and this is for any system and especially you since you are in a high temp climate. Get goooooood case airflow. Get a nice 120mm or 2 80mm intakes and the same exhaust. I'd say 1800-2200 RPMS or so for the 120mm. This way you are constantly ciruculating air over your heatsinks on your entire system and hard drive as well. You just want to blow that hot air out of the back and bring in fresh air. The ambient air temp is still going to be lower than the inside air but since it is hotter it doesnt transfer heat as well to hotter air so you need more of it.

Yeah or you can do that.

You should be able to overclock just fine, just watch your temps and don't push you voltages too much.

DAMN!! Two words that will be the cure for everything.......Air Conditioning. My house is a nice 20c year round. It is hard to cool a CPU when it is running in an oven. I remember in my last house how it would be 30c in the summers. My CPU was running 10 degrees hotter than in any other season.

I doubt in this. Your ambient temp is pretty high. I've about 25C now (no air-conditioning) and think it's too high.

With those wild temperatures, did you ever think of liquid cooling? That might be your best bet.

If you start slow, you wont fry your rig. Start at a bare minimum, and once stability fails, stop and go back to your last stable overclock. Remember, you wont get the same results as some of the other members get because of your temperatures. Just start slow and DON'T adjust your Vcore as that will really shoot up your temps. Keep your Vcore at stock settings and move your FSB 5-10 mhz at a time until stability stops and then just go back to where you were prior. Good luck!!