curious where to start

[methodicaloutlaw]

i never done it before but i got some good hardware and want to OC a little bit.

what do you guys suggest i do?

Pentium 4 3.0
ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe
two- 36GB Western Digital Raptors 10,000RPM 8MB raid 0
1GB DDR PC3500 MUSHKIN BLACK Level 2
Antec 1080 case with 4 stock 80mm fans
i got a 80mm vantec tornado in the door
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600
Creative SBLIVE!
Lite-on cdr-rw

i tried the setting in the bios "5% overclock" and i get a BSOD at boot up or it freezes on loading windows xp screen.
im assuming its pushing at a weak point like my video card (its all i need to play counter strike with for now). so i was wondering if a changing ram timings or voltages anywhere would get me started. im going to get a new fan for my chip and heatsink but in the mean time im restless idle temps are 36c cpu and 29c mobo. i have seen my cpu temp in the area of 50-53c at times during long periods of gaming or running sandra. i have the vantec 80mm in the door unplugged right now because i dont need the airflow and its loud.

i have read the forum, doing specific searches has been disabled.
i have looked at the google links (LOL) but im cautious. the searches were enabled at one time and i used it to come up with the hardware i chose. im hoping someone with a similar setup as mine would have some useful insight to get me started and fired up.

thanks.

 

[computerpro3]

Overclocking is easy, and fun, with a little patience. Don't do that auto overclock crap, do it manually. First thing to do is set your agp/pci to a fixed 66/33mhz lock. That will eliminate your video card/pci cards/ide devices from becoming a bottleneck. Then nudge up the FSB until you are not stable in windows, or can't boot anymore. Then, go into the BIOS and go to your ram speed menu. ON the asus, I believe it should give you the choices of 400, 320, and 266. Choose 320, which is also known as the 5/4 divider. That should run your memory asynchronously with the fsb. Keep upping your FSB until you are not stable. Then go into your BIOS and give the cpu some more volts (stay under 1.7V if you are on stock heatsink, 1.7 is fine if you are on something like a high end swiftech or thermalright). Also give the memory maximum volts, 2.85. This won't even make it hot, don't worry about it. Keep upping the FSB until unstable. You will probably max out around 3.5-3.6ghz with that chip, maybe 3.4. Good Luck, let us know how it goes!

 

[methodicaloutlaw]

its a little unstable at 3.6 so i dialed it back to 3.5 by lowering the fsb. i set the ram voltage all the way up 2.85v ram speed at 320. my cpu voltage was on auto and you had said not to go past 1.7. i had it on 1.625volts at 3.6. i think i have it on like 1.5v now @ 3.5. im unsure whats a safe area on that because the original setting was "auto" and im not sure what "auto" would be.
in other words i really dont know where im at on voltage. im assuming im avoiding cpu lag with that setting.
im looking at a CNPS7000A-AlCu zalman right now. i have noticed some people going very high, nearly adding another ghz to there system by just adding one of these fans. would that be a correct assumption?
one more question. by looking at the screen shot below does everything look ok? the timings look kinda funky to me. judging by what i see others timings at. anyway thanks for the help. this is addictive.

 

[computerpro3]

ahhhh you have the folden grail of memory, as do I! Set the memory speed in BIOS to 366 (or whatever the 300 setting is) and crank up the timings to 2-2-2-5! Get ready to fly...

 

[methodicaloutlaw]

i got it set to 320 and timings are like you said looks good.

still getting freezes everynow and then though