Well, I currently am on my backup computer, and its... A little on the weak side, so I was thinking of overclocking it a little to see what I can get out of it.
I am going to overclock a...

on a


I am hoping to get it running at around at least 3-3.2ghz?
How would I go about overclocking this system? I am rather new to this, never really bothered to try it.

On this site is the owners manual, download that and it'll have the instructions.

http://support.asus.com/Download.aspx?S ... SE&p=1&os=

If you don't know how to overclock a system, then you're not ready to. Go and do the research involved in overclocking as it's not as simple as changing an option and it working. There are dozens of options you need to change and balance to get a stable overclock.

You would also be better off on a forum that specialises in overclocking rather than here.

I can tell you right now that without spending a lot of money you are not going to get a Northwood P4 that shipped as 2.4GHz to 3.0 or 3.2GHz unless you want to kill it or watercool, but that's a waste. You may be able to get 2.6 or 2.8GHz stable if you're lucky. But as Andy said, if you know nothing about it, do your research first or you may end up with no spare machine at all.

It's not possible to overclock that Northwood CPU past 2.8GHz without running into stability issues. The P4s produces a lot of heat, so air cooling wouldn't get you far. Besides, you won't see a huge difference in overclocking it by an extra 400MHz. Maybe WinRAR would save you a few seconds when you extract a file.

you would be lucky to get it to 2.8ghz let alone 3.2ghz there very old CPUS and use lots of heat you would need to have a very good heat sink for it and that's just to get maby 2.8 out of i would say leave it alone

The rig I am using now was running 3.4 in the past, I haven't done it personally though.

in that case then you better go the the overclockers forums if the very computer your using now has been overclocked that far and run stable then you may be lucky. but you need to know 100% what your doing or you risk having no computer at all. the best way to start is going up 50 mhz at a time then use a program called prime95 to stress test it but keep looking at the temps using a temp reader also keep in mined if it gets hotter than 60 degrees celsius that's unsafe.
when your computer is at that max it can take safely then stop. this is all i can say that may help so go to the overclockers forums that's your best bet.

I nearly had my 2.8GHz Northwood at 4GHz on air.

Well, the Northwood processors did run a LOT cooler than the Prescott, or the Prescott-2M processors. Air wasn't enough to keep my old 3.2 GHz below 45 degrees, which may have been normal, but consider that I have a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo using the same cooling system and same case, that runs at about 28 degrees.

I would personally NOT overclock any system unless there was a serious enough economic advantage to gaining extra speed over a slower clocked processor, as opposed to purchasing and/or otherwise aquiring a processor of which was actually intended to run at that particular speed.

In case you didn't know, when processors are manufactured, they are run through various tests regarding cooling and overheating, and whichever is the most practical speed in that regard (as far as heating/cooling is concerned) is the one of which is stamped on the chip. However, counterfeiters would sometimes purchase slower chips, and modify the print in such a way that it would state a higher speed than the processor was actually intended to run at.

I would normally avoid overclocking, since it has often been the cause of unnecessary and easily preventable system unreliability, and as such, I would only do so if there was a reason as to why it had to be done (for example, compatibility and/or issues relating to practical performance relating to certain applications and game titles), otherwise, I simply would not do so.

As long as you are enough advantaged economically (in other words, as long as it's practically possible), you would be better off by far with a faster processor than with trying to gain extra speed out of a processor beyond what it was originally intended to run at. Overclocking, I find, is quite cheap to say the least, not to mention that most people of whom are involved in it could, from what I see, just as easily purchase a faster processor anyway, so for them, it's basically for nothing (with one notable exception for gaining extra speed out of older systems, but even most desktop systems can be upgraded with newer motherboards to accomodate the more recent processors, at least as long as they have ATX formfactor cases).

This is why I have always avoided overclocking, anyway.

True, but for obvious reasons, they always go with the most conservative speed. Mainly because processors dying early is bad publicity, but as AMD have shown recently, there's a much greater demand for cheaper chips. They've actually had to badge more expensive chips as cheaper chips purely because they produce more expensive chips than there's demand for, and not enough cheap chips to meet the demand for them. Hence the whole core-unlocking scene that's possible with AMDs.

I'd contend that it's worth a try - your results might not be great, but you'll still be getting more than you did before you tried. You certainly won't lose anything provided you do it carefully.