Two 1600XP Overclock questions

[DashK]

Hello,

I've heard the term "unlock" the XP here a few times, while I know this is something I do not have any desire to do, can you still overclock without doing this? What does the term unlock mean?

Also my bios have the following programs in them for overclocking "Clockometer, Overclock Partner", are these any good to use? Or is there a better way to overclock with another program.

Finally, since I know the 1600 is 1.4Gz, and god knows I in no way want to try and take this thing to some breaking point, is there any "safe" way to overclock? Say just to 1.5Gz and call it a day? Or can you go a bit higher safe? Also you can go back to your old settings when you overclock right?

Will this overclocking require a "bigger" power supply, or will the 300w one that came with the system do? I have the heatsink fan the PC came with, and I installed one of those 5.25 bay fans and PCI slot fans, which seem to suck a good bit of air out.

Finally can anyone recommend some sort of program that can monitor heat, voltage, speed, ect. for this sort of thing?

Sorry for all these questions, but I hate not knowing how to do something, even when I just get introduced to it.

[Luie]

I've got a similar question as well.

Does rising Vcore uses up more electricity?
(Volt goes up be does the "amp" goes up as well?)


Some of the answer for DashK,
You can set back to unoverclock after you had overclocked.

MBM is a good moitor for the computer's performance.

Unlock means to connect the L1 brige on the chip together.

[bobt17]

the term unlock means to connect the L1 bridges on the cpu they look like :::: on the top of the cpu and u connect them verticaly to make it so u can change the multiplier there are various ways of doing it tho and it can be quite hard with an athlon xp and as for a monitoring program u should check out http://mbm.livewiredev.com/ and download motherboard monitor 5 most of us use it