Realistic expectations?

Hey all, first time posting on the board so color me newb.

Anyhow, I have never done any overclocking before and am nervous about blowing my system up but am willing to try. I'm looking for some conservative goals to meet on Overclocking the system I'm about to build. Here's what I have coming in the next day or two.


Aluminum Thermaltake 2000A
Thermaltake 480 Silent Purepower PSU
Asus P4C 800-E Delux Mobo
P4 2.6ghz with HT and 800mhz fsb
A twin set of Mushkin 3500 L2 512k, 1gig total RAM
Hercules Raedon 9800 Pro 128meg Video card

What kind of safe goals should I try to achieve with this setup and using the stock cooling? I've been reading guides and everything and it's still mostly greek to me.

I have the same processor and I have it running at 3Ghz stable, I never really tried pushing it. From stock cooling I expect 3Ghz. You have awsome ram and a good quality motherboard so with better cooling I would expect much more then 3GHz.

Welcome to the forums

I would read all of the intel stickys that apply to you and remember P4 northwood core processors don't like voltages 1.7 and above. The CPU Data base on our front page should tell you what you should expect from a stepping and type of cooling.

You have some great components listed. Your mileage may vary, but 3 gig is a total no brainer. Like Mr. $T$ says, you'll probably get more out of it since you have good cooling. Typically people are getting 3.1 to 3.3 gig with similar setups. Hardcore overclockers that luck out with a good CPU and are willing to push voltages have gotten higher yet.

batboy said:

You have some great components listed. Your mileage may vary, but 3 gig is a total no brainer. Like Mr. $T$ says, you'll probably get more out of it since you have good cooling. Typically people are getting 3.1 to 3.3 gig with similar setups. Hardcore overclockers that luck out with a good CPU and are willing to push voltages have gotten higher yet.

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That sums it up. It should do 3.0 without effort. Probably 3.2 with some tweaking. Hard to say beyond that.

Sweet, thanks guys! I was hoping I could get at least 3.0 on stock cooling. I plan on purchasing a nice heatsink and fan a little later. I figure, getting this first build of mine together and working would be enough of a challenge for now.