Two questions about my Asus A7N8X deluxe system ....

I have an Alienware pc that has this motherboard and an
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ cpu ... and have two questions about
it, if anyone can help me.

The CPU had the standard AMD heatsink/fan on the cpu,
and I wasnt too impressed with how warm this machine
always ran. (and even once, it overheated while simply
doing a defrag of the harddrives ... bear in mind, that this
case has THREE intake fans, and two EXHAUSTs)

I have since bought/installed a 'Thermaltake K7 Volcano 11+
Xaser' heatsink/fan .... and I have a question about my temps
(as given by Motherboard Monitor) ... With the orig heatsink/fan
on average my idle temps read: Socket 49-50cel Diode 57-59cel .....

With the new Thermaltake ... it reads: Socket 44-45 cel Diode
45-47cel.

So, it seems that the new heatsink/fan made a dramatic difference
in the Diode temps, but only a minor one with the Socket temp.

My question is simply is this the kind of difference I should have
noticed? (I would have thought whatever difference should have been
the same for both Socket and Diode)

My 2nd question: This system came with 1 gb (2 x 512mb) Corsair
pc2700 XMS ram. I happen to have an extra stick of Crucial PC2700
(512mb) here, and was curious if I could use it in this machine.
Alienware said they didnt know if it'd be compatible, but "as the XMS
ram has very criticial timings, it probably wouldnt work with the mix"
Does anyone have any thoughts on whether this ram mix would/could
work? (no big deal really, I just thought, as I have it laying here, I
should
try to use it)

Thank you all, for taking the time to read this. A little longwinded, but
I wanted to make sure I explained the questions thoroughly.