On review sites that go into detail about relatively stable overclocking such as
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=141&type=expert&pid=17
and
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/591/12/
are they referring to stock fans or higher quality ones?

A line from the first article states "Using the stock air cooling that comes with the FX-55 processor" meaning it was done with a stock heatsink and fan. The second article is talking about the ATI Radeon HD 3850 CrossFire Video Card. Does this info help?
chees
Hynesy