Need help OCing

Here are my system specs:


Soyo K7 Dragon Plus
Athlon XP 1800+
2 256 MB Micron DDR Ram
Sound Blaster Audigy XGamer
Leadtek Winfast GF3 Ti500

I got this sytem a few months ago. I had some stability problems at first, where it would lock up and make a loud noise from the speakers. I somehow fixed this with BIOS tweaking. Now that it has been stable for a few months I am ready to OC. However it becomes horribly unstable at even a 135 FSB. My cooling perfect, 37 C at boot up. What can I do to get a good OC? I feel like I should be able to get at least a 145 FSB. Anyone have any suggestions on what I can do to get an OC working on my system? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

Try putting some thermal goop on your northbridge, chances are it doesn't have any. Some may say that the 266A chip doesn't get that hot, but it can't hurt. Also, try starting with the most conservative mem settings and work your way up from there, maybe the mem is being pushed too hard and just craps the bed when you oc, eventhough you have good mem. You may want to try pushing the mem in harder, may not be seated properly or something or you might want to try palying musical slots with the mem modules as well. All I can think of right now. Hope it helps

Mem settings

What settings would you recommend? Dropping back to CAS 2.5? Any particualr setting or settings? Thanks for the reply!

try
sys performance=normal
cas 2.5
bank interleave 2 or disabled
with the mem set to normal, not fast or turbo

It may not be one of your key computer components. When you turn up the FSB, it turns up all your PCI cards, and your Hard Drives as well. So if you have a cheap modem... or a cheap hard drive or something, it could be dragging down the rest of the system.

Also, make sure your PSU is big enough. you should be using a 350 Watt, maybe more with that setup. A faulty PSU will quicky destabilaize a system.

PSU should be good

My HD is a Western Digital 7200 80GB, and my only PCI card is the Audigy. I think those parts are fine. My PSU is an Enermax 350W PSU, so I think that is fine also. I now suspect my RAM as the culprit, because when I underclock it I can raise my FSB just fine. I thought it was good RAM, I guess I was wrong.

The Dragon + doesn't let you adjust the IO voltage and thats the problem most people have with overclocking. Your memory might be ok but the board won't let you adjust it.