basic overclock

Overclocking e8400 Core 2 Duo. - Tech Support Guy Forums

The very first rule of overclocking; "Do not overclock with parts you cannot afford to replace"

As long as you are comfortable with that and understand that overclocking will void any warranty, we can continue. Remember there is no safe overclock; even experienced OCers sometimes fry parts.

First read your manual and become familiar with the bios and bios settings. I have a gigabyte board and somewhere in the bios you will have a section called Intel tweak or something like that. Again read your manual.

Now restart and enter the bios. Find your pci-e lock and set it at 100 NOT auto. This locks your pci bus so you are not overclocking that as well.
Find your ram speed and lower it to the next lower setting; ie if ddr 800, set it to 667. Save settings and restart.

Next again enter the bios. Find your fsb setting and up it from the stock 333 to something like 345 or so. Save settings and restart. Now you need to test stability. I use an app called prime95. Make sure you download the latest one since only the later ones work with dual core cpus. Run prime95 for a min of 15-20min. If there are no errors AND temps stay normal, restart and again up the fsb by 10 or so. Repeat the stability test. Keep doing this until you get errors in prime95.

When you do find an error, you have a choice.
-- You can backoff the fsb to a known stable OC or
--if you are really brave, you can up the vcore and NB voltages and again attempt the stability test.

Remember if it is not prime95 stable, it is NOT stable.