Your thoughts about my new machine

[Yurikoex]

This is my machine I assembled last night:
E8400 Wolfdale 3.0ghz
OCZ Vanquisher CPU Cooler
Asus P5K-E
Corsair Dominator PC-8500 1066fsb 2gig
BFG 8800 GT OC 625mhz core clock 512mb 1800mhz memory(900 before double pump)
WD 500 SE16 sata 2.0 drive
Ultra power supply 500 watt

In idle with all default settings, The CPU ran at 23 C, CPU Fan at 2300RPM, the GPU was running 63 C with the fan on auto adjust reading 20% speed.

I was happy with the CPU temp but the GPU was a bit higher than I wanted(even though i knew those cards ran hot). I changed the auto GPU fan speed to manual and put it to 100%, the temp fell down to 53 C at idle. I figured it didn't change that much going to 100% fan speed so i put it back to auto. I went into a game and played for about 10 minutes, Halflife2 lost coast. The CPU temp went up to 30 C, still good in my opinion, but the GPU temp went up to 75 C, which i noticed it kicked the auto fan only up to 37%. 75 C is sounding a bit high but i imagine it wouldn't ever get much higher than that.

As a side note, i did overclock the gpu to 660mhz and the memory to 950mhz(1900) for a few minutes with the fan on 100% and it didnt crash or get much hotter.

Is there a way i can trick the auto speed into keeping it alittle cooler, like maybe 50% at idle and 75% at full load, like kinda adjusting the thresholds some?

Also, since my cpu it running so cool, I think its pretty safe to overclock my wolfdale, seems like everyone has been over clocking them to 3.6ghz without adjusting voltage and still air cooling. Any thoughts there?

 

[akhilles]

I used to use this one to control my 8800gt fan speed. Great little app. Remembers my settings when uninstalling & installing the new version:

http://www.vaguesoft.com/users/dwood/blog/tutorials/rivatuner2/

To protect the future & reputation of the pack, we must unite Wolfdales...

You got the right parts for overclocking. Go to bios, leave everything to auto, change FSB to 400. 400 x 9 = 3600 or 3.6ghz. If the pc posts & loads windows, do some stability tests:

Do 2MB right away:

http://www.xtremesystems.com/pi/

Reboot to memtest for 5+ passes:

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

Run blend for 8 hours while you sleep:

http://sp2004.fre3.com/beta/beta2.htm

Let me know what program errors out & the error code/#/message.

 

[two bit hit]

Seems like a nice little system, 1066 MHz RAM, the Wolfdale and a nice cooler, should OC really well. akhilles seems to have covered everything, you might want to go in smaller steps to 3.6 first, but you should be perfectly OK at 3.6, but we all get a little nervous with new parts. All I can say is good luck!