Athlon X2 4200...worth overclocking

[newman4ever]

Getting ready to build my new rig and wanted some advise. I have a Athlon X2 4200 with Thermalright heatsink, fan. G.Skill PC4000 ram (2 gigs), DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra D. OCZ Powerstream 520. ATI Radeon X800 overclocked to X850

 

Is this processor a good overclocker, and will this combination of hardware workout well for an overclock? OR do you think I should just run it at stock?

 

This isn't my first build, but it will be the first one for me in about 2 years. I have no experience with overclocking, but I've been reading alot here on these forums.

 

I downloaded the Difinitive Overclocking guide for Athlon 64 in PDF format and have studied it thoroughly, also go the initial build info from AG.

 

Is all this same info applicable to the A64 X2 ?

 

Thanks for any advise.

[Xinil]

Overclock the hell out of that thing man. Hehe, why not? Just watch your temps closely and have fun. I'm having a blast getting into overclocking with my new Opty. Pisses me off that I can only hit 2.88 (i want MORE!), but its fun testing out different settings and finding your cpu's happy spot.

[sQuid]

Hey newman, give it a shot. I've been playin' for about 3 weeks now and havin fun. Only willing to go with the moderate oc you see in my sig because of my weak cooling, but I'm having a blast. It was an easy reach, and great fun testing and benching per the guides here. Just follow the stuff you learn here and you should have no probs. I'm not willing to blow my cpu up and have been pretty conservative with my oc, but my rig is COMPLETELY stable and I've got the equivalent of a step or two up cpu (x2 4600+). I'm happy and USING my rig. I'll prolly go some higher when I get better cooling, but right now am more interested in tweaking, playin some games and surfing, but not worryin' about BSODs and instability, etc. That will probably come later, heh.

Luck.

[David James]

backup everything, and give it a go - best thing I ever did was

 

a) Partition my boot drive into a 20G C: and 50G X:

B) Get Acronis True Image

c) back up all my apps from the C drive to X: and/or DVD - can fit everything on one DVD compressed.

 

That way you can go nuts overclocking and not worry about disk corruption - every so often I restore the Windows drive. My rule is if I have a freeze or BSOD I will do a restore. (eventually - like trash it for 2 weeks then restore when stable) It is a pain to have to restore and backup everytime I want to make a permanent change, but well worth it.

 

As for overclocking, yeah, follow the guide, keep your load temps under 50C and volts under 1.55V - 1.6V (whichever comes first) and have fun!