overclocking my Duron 700

[Eaglescout]

System Specs:

Abit KT7 RAID
700 MHz Duron (unlocked with pencil)
256 Megs PC133 RAM (Stock Speed)
2 Seagare 20.4 Gig ATA 100 HDD's Striping RAID 0
Philips Acoustic Edge Soundacard
Guilemott Hercules 32 meg Geforce2MX Video Card
3Com NIC

What I want:

I would like to get this thing running at 900 Mhz Solid if possible. I know a good bit about PC's but I am not real familiar with overclocking. I currently have it running at 800Mhz all through the multiplier. 8.0x100. Can anyone offer some suggestions? I am not familiar with how FSB, voltage, and Multiplier all talk to one another while overclocking. Any help and a little explanation on how they interact would be helpful.

Thanks for the help,

Eaglescout

[Eaglescout]

UPDATE:

OK, I have sucessfully overclocked this thing to 900 Mhz. 9.0x100, 1.85V. The problem is that the CPU was running about 50 degrees celcius, which I think is a little hot. So I dropped it down to 8.5 x 104, which put me at 884 Mhz, still runs stable (so far), but temp is sitting around 50 celcius. I havent got any fancy cooling on here. Some sort of Orb, not a real nice one. Power supply fan, 2 case fans, and a couple small fans that blow over my hard drives. It doesnt look like I am going to be able to overclock this thing like I would like to do, with all the heat issues I am having. I upped my voltage to 1.85 to achieve these reults. will this cause problmes to my board?

Eaglescout

[Aman99]

1.85v is very safe if cooled decently. If you mean 50 C after 30 min of load, then that isn't so bad, if you mean 50C idle you have a very big problem. I'm running a 1200 mhz at 1466 at 1.85v it runs at 47-57C. As long as you don't go over 60C things should be ok, although its always better to have it cooler. 50C is a lot of heat for your setup though. You might want to look into a new heatsink and fan. SO what i advise is... if the temp stays below 60 C at all time (should not go over it ever) and things run perfectly stable, then you can probly leave it there.

Aaron

[Pitspawn]

STOP!!!!

Dont overclock w/o doing proper research mate! It is especially dangerous overclocking your computer by that much and knowing little or nothing about overclocking. Here is my little basic quick training about overclocking. I aint a hardcore veteran, but I have overclocked 4-5 computers so far successfully, so I'd say Im ok.

FSB (Front Side BUS) ... FSB is the base frequency that your motherboard contacts with the components attached to it. Increasing FSB overclocks EVERYTHING attached to the motherboard.

Multiplier ... Multiplier is an abbrieviation of CPU Multiplier. Multiplier is basically what it says. Your CPU runs at MULTIPLER x FSB. So if you have a this setting ... 7.0x103, you are running at 721Mhz. Get it?

Voltage ... This is basically the juice that your cpu runs off of. The higher the voltage the more stable your cpu. The other side affect of voltage is that it INCREASES cpu temperature and increases the rate of electromigration.

Electromigration ... This means the slow process of component failure. This process is doubled in speed for every 10ºC of heat extra on a component. Excessive voltage can also increase the speed of electromigration, although nowhere near as fast as temperature.

Should you overclock? ... The most important thing of all. Overclocking pushes components beyond their factory settings. Basically, all of the things you overclock will die quicker. The question is, how often can you afford to replace them?

6 Months...Your ok to overclock your system to the absolute limit with excessive temperatures.
1 Year ... Another absolute limit overclock is possible but with moderate temperatures.
2-3 Years ... High overclocking with low temperatures. Or Moderate overclocking with moderate temperatures.
>3 Years...Dont overclock, or stay within the general -/+ 10% clock speed of all components.

This is yet another good point, almost all components are ensured to work at 10% slower or faster than their factory settings. This is why you are nearly always safe if you keep in this range. The only rule that this isnt true is for things like ram where you cant really increase its speed beyond its maximum settings.

[Eaglescout]

Awesome! Thanks for the replies, guys, they were very informative. I think I've found a pretty happy medium on my overclocking here. I am running my duron 700 at 901 Mhz. 8.5 x 106. Vcore is running at 1.74. Idle temp is around 43 degrees celcius, and after 2 hours of counterstrike, it's a little closer to 49 or 50. I guess we'll see how this goes.

Thanks again,

Eaglescout