One of the things that make it hard is thermal inertia.
true. BTUs take time to work their way from the chip through the sink and into the air. cgminer 2.0.3 is aggressive on ramp up though. I like the authors thinking.. safety 1st when it comes to temps. I use 45-85 auto fan (on the dedicated 5830) with a high temp shutdown at 92
with the other PCs that have other duties I have several modes to choose from in batch files. some keep it quiet (60% max fan speed, vary the gpu clocks to keep 72 C temp), others keep it maxed out (maintain max clocks at 85% fan as long as you can). cgminer rocks.