Iwrote this in reply to a guy on
OC.com who had killed like 10 peices of hearware in 5 months basically through trying to be an extreme overclocker with no real idea about what he is doing.
I though you might find it interesting/helpfull.
1 - Durons.....if your testing a waterblock voltmod or heatsink that may cause damage go buy a duron 600 and test on that for a few hourd/days. If you kill it, who cares just buy another. You dont want to kill a expensive Xp.
2 - One step at a time. If you want to unlock your CPU voltmod it then increase the FSB drop the multiplyer and overclock it, dont do all that in one go. Take things slowly, unlock the CPU and test it carefully once your sure its ok pop in a duron volt mod and test that out. Then put the unlocked CPU in choose a 6x multi and slowly increase the fsb untill you are unstable. Then increase the multi to overclock. If you do it all in one go you wont know whats not working and why, and your much more likely to kill something.
3 - Good
PSU. without a good PSUyou wont get a good overclock..period. I recomend any
PSU based on the fortron scource 400watt (such as a sparkle 400) simply the best overclocking
PSU avalable.
3 - Dont run before you can walk. If you have never soldered in your life dont do a volt mod, or at least do some good practice before hand on a dead/cheap board, the same goes for CPU unlocking and other hardware mods.
4 - DONT RUSH... Stop and think, then think some more. Before you hit that power swich make sure you havent missed anything, one slight mistake can cost you dear.
5 - Research... Oppainter and Macci dont just buy random components and get great overclocks they spend allot of time and effort picking the absolute best and working hard to overclock it. There is some luck involved but if you pick the best components you have a much better chance of a great result.
If anybody else has any handy tips please share them.