OCing older P4's

[Grnade]

I built my current computer with my graduation money a couple years ago, when P4's had just hit the market. I used an ASUS P4B533 board(533 FSB) and a retail Pentium 4 2.0ghz stepping A. The computer has been one of the best I've had, performs great, and never has had hardware related crashes, however it's starting to show its age. Being a student on a budget, I wanted to extend some life out of it. I started out by adding a dual bearing exhaust and intake fan, at the bottom and top respectively. Then I replaced my old video card with a Sapphire 9600 XT. I also picked up a video card cooler. I drilled two holes in the top of the case to let heat out the top. Before doing all this work, it idled at about 35 C. After doing all this work, it idled at 29 C, which I felt gave me some room for overclocking.

However, I see a lot of conflict among the guides out there. Some say don't get let it get past 60 or 70, but I've also read that you should try to keep your operating temperature below 40. At this point, I have overclocked to 2.21ghz with an operating temp of 32 and peak of 41. I feel I still have much more potential, however my question is what is a good operating temp to shoot for? If I can feasibly idle at 40 C just fine, I feel I have a lot more room to play with still. Any of you have experience with OC'ing early P4 models? How high do you think I could go temperature wise while still having an all hours operating PC?

I have a stick of PC2100 Crucial in there now, so I know my maximum FSB before my ram starts flaking out is 133.

 

[diredesire]

I built my current computer with my graduation money a couple years ago, when P4's had just hit the market. I used an ASUS P4B533 board(533 FSB) and a retail Pentium 4 2.0ghz stepping A. The computer has been one of the best I've had, performs great, and never has had hardware related crashes, however it's starting to show its age. Being a student on a budget, I wanted to extend some life out of it. I started out by adding a dual bearing exhaust and intake fan, at the bottom and top respectively. Then I replaced my old video card with a Sapphire 9600 XT. I also picked up a video card cooler. I drilled two holes in the top of the case to let heat out the top. Before doing all this work, it idled at about 35 C. After doing all this work, it idled at 29 C, which I felt gave me some room for overclocking.

However, I see a lot of conflict among the guides out there. Some say don't get let it get past 60 or 70, but I've also read that you should try to keep your operating temperature below 40. At this point, I have overclocked to 2.21ghz with an operating temp of 32 and peak of 41. I feel I still have much more potential, however my question is what is a good operating temp to shoot for? If I can feasibly idle at 40 C just fine, I feel I have a lot more room to play with still. Any of you have experience with OC'ing early P4 models? How high do you think I could go temperature wise while still having an all hours operating PC?

I have a stick of PC2100 Crucial in there now, so I know my maximum FSB before my ram starts flaking out is 133.

60-70c is when the CPU is getting rather uncomfortably hot, and i'd keep my eye on it if it was that hot.
an operating temp of 40c (load) is actually a pretty damn good temp. I wouldn't worry about it if it was at load 50c. Just make sure it's stable at that temp. Much higher than that i'd start looking at some better cooling. Don't bump the voltage on the chip more than 1.7. Older P4's suffered from SNDS (Sudden northwood death syndrom). i.e. random DEATH!!!

 

[Grnade]

At what point do you usually bump the voltage up? I'm at 2305 MHz now and it seems to be running pretty stable at 34 C and 1.5 volts. I'd still like to go higher, but I'm not sure when I should up the voltage.