Overclock or not?

[Burnout]

I was messing around today, found that I had set a jumper wrong when I built my computer, so I could only set my FSB to 132, which is below what my CPU can handle, stock. Always thought that was a little weird, so I fixed it. Now I can bump my FSB up to 165, which is a little crazzy for my 266RAM. Right now I have it set to 150MHz FSB, and it's stable as a rock.

Stock clock is only 1388MHz Athlon XP 1600+ Thoughbred, so I gained a few MHz. I'm toying with the idea of going higher. It's not my CPU I'm worried about, it's my cheaper DDR266RAM I have. Right now it's clocked at 300, so as you can see it's a little out of where it should be.

I was just wondering if any of you overclock, if you would share it or something. I'm just a little bored, so what the heck.

 

[BMW POWER]

just after i built my PC i bought an uprated heatsink and fan for my CPU (pentium 4 2.8ghz) i then over clocked it to 3ghz and everything was fine but after a while my fan on the heatsink started playing up so i took it back and now currently i'm running the standard fan with my CPU back to the default speed

 

[emad]

I personally don't like to oc because of the cooling requirements - I hate the sound of fans and I like my rig as silent as possible.

First figure out how much you can boost yours safely by looking at other people's rigs or just surf google till you find out. Then decide whether the payoff is worth it or not. Keep in mind that you will need to boost your cooling heavily to safely oc an AMD since they naturally run hot as it is. The ram *shouldn't* be affected - if the system is unstable, you know what's wrong and you can drop your fsb.

 

[Pako]

Overclocking is not for the faint of heart. Be careful...it can become a addiction pretty quick. You can never be fast enough.....

Whats nice about overclocking is you can gain a few more droplets of speed, and it might save you some money on upgrading. I hear that OC'ing will reduce the life of your equipment, but with a life of two years for most electronics, you might be ok.

 

[skylineGTR_guy]

the only thing I ever overclocked was my video card. Then I got a new one that needs no overclocking. ATI RADEON 9800 XT 256MB

 

[Burnout]

Overclocking is not for the faint of heart. Be careful...it can become a addiction pretty quick. You can never be fast enough.....

It sure is an addiction, and I like it...It's such a rush...

I searched the net and found people pushinh a 160+FSB on theor 1600+s...Of course, my ram would blow up if I put it that high...I've got PC2100, and since 160x2=320, well, we're nearly at PC2700 speeds.

My temps are quite decent, at stock speed idoling I was getting about 40C, idol with the 150FSB I get about 43-44C. Full load stock was about 45C and full load bumped up is about 50C. Last time I checked AMD they said the Athlon doesn't die until 71C, so I'm in the safe.

One thing I like about using the FSB as your main source of overclocking action is that it also OCs your PCI and AGP slots. Basically, I'm overclocking everything to en extent.

 

[Cobraboy]

AthlonXP 2500+ @ 2.4Ghz

I'd only ever try to keep that overclock if I had a better video card and was hunting for a few more 3d marks.

 

[skylineGTR_guy]

use a program called Power strip or something like that to overclock your video card. It works really well and is super easy to use.