Do you live in a metro area? Because you could probably check the phone book and call around for a mom-and-pop place to put all the parts together for like $50-$75. Or if you have a tech school nearby, just go to the IT or Networking classes and ask a student if he wants to make $40 bucks for an hour of work.
You need CCC to be able to turn the fanspeed higher in a profile. Depending on your ambient temperature and even a little airflow, you could just run it straight out of the box with just the driver with no problems. It will be hot. I think most idle 70-80C without adjusting the fan speed. Overclocking, I have no clue how hot it will get. The real issue seems to be the faulty driver or CCC which MAY cause BSOD's, although no one is sure yet as to what it exactly is, only that it exists and is hopefully being ironed out. Some say it is CCC, but on ATi's website, people have said they installed just the driver and they are still getting random crashes.
I had crashes in TF2 until I set the Catalyst AI in CCC to disabled or advanced, the standard seems to be crashing it. I also turned all settings that I could to "application controlled." It has fixed my specific crash. I haven't even installed any other games yet, so I can't speak for the stability of it with others.
In this thread, look at Matrixian's sig. He has a link for Radeon 48XX Fan Fix 1 (single card)
Click that and follow the directions to fix your card's fan. I set mine to 55% because it is a good balance of noise/cooling. It will drop your cards temps by at least 10-15 degrees.
Its very roomy. Good airflow. Plus it came with three extra case fans because the stock ones installed malfunction at the lowest setting. So in essence you can install 5 case fans on medium and the big boy top fan as an exhaust.
And there is not set-in period for MX-2. I definitely want to get some with a new cooler. Whats the best way to clean stock thermal grease off an Intel E8400?
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