yes but lower temps allow for higher overclocks.....yes i understand some processors overclock better than others but they all overclock pretty well these days.....yes sometimes you get a bad chip where the company took a bad chip which couldn't clock as well and put it in a lower end processor but still, temps help a lot.
Without a aftermarket cooler you wont be able to overclock much, my graphics card used to artifact every time i overclocked it because it was reaching temps already of around 80-100 celsius (yes its an ATI 4850, one of the first to come out) I put an aftermarket cooler on it and i could finally overclock it a decent amount but i still think i got a bad card because i can't overclock as high as other........i got around 730mhz core and 1140 memory
My Q6600 used to be only able to go to 3.0ghz with stock cooling without having insane temps or voltages.......i replaced it with an OCZ vendetta and now i can almost max voltage and such without worrying about temps and getting my speed up to 3.65 ghz
I realized what your saying and i agree also, it all depends on the chip itself but many overclockers will tell you that the cooler still plays a big role....how bout 2nd biggest after the processor itself? sound good? lol