ectoblast.com:
You might notice some common themes from the group. I'd like to add my two cents, based on my experience of overclocking which started 2 years ago with the Athlon Classic (Slot A).
First and biggest issue - You need a decent heatsink. Screwy things start to happen to your system as the temperature goes up. My 1 GHz T-Bird system starts getting flaky around 56 C (CPU temp), and remember, that temperature is not accurate anyway. What ever your motherboard monitor / CPU temperature monitor / bios temperature monitor is reading, assume it's reading on the low side. Now I don't know much about your heatsink, and it may perform well. That brings us to the second issue.
Second issue - Maximize airflow through the case. Ideally, you would set up a laminar flow, with minimal disruption of the air as it flows across the CPU assembly. You are never going to see that with these cases. I still haven't found the ideal mounting locations / fan directions to achieve the best possible cooling with minimal noise. I did learn something though - go get that Rheostat bus (fan bus controlled by rheostats) from PC Mods. It's a good investment, because you can control up to four fan speeds (you vary the voltage the fan gets from the 12-volt bus). This means you can fine-tune the fan speeds to optimize air flow (within the bounds of what is achievable in your case), or just turn them down to lower the noise when you don't need extra cooliing (as in Winter time).
Third issue - The best power supply you can afford. Some people talked about power supplys, and I bet they are talking from experience. I had lots of problems with stability, using a Deer 300 W power supply that came with our $69 case for the T-bird system. I kept playing around with the fan locations, and then finally got a decent 475 W power supply. All of the problems went away, except for the relatively high CPU temperature that I have been fighting since I bought my T-bird / Step Thermodynamics heatsink assembly. That was the best investment I made, period.
Fourth issue - The rest of the items go here. Quality memory is going to get you farther than standard quality. I'm talking about getting DDR2400 vs DDR2100, or PC150 vs PC133. The lower the CAS setting (as in 2, vs 3), the faster the memory, as that relates to required latency time (time inbetween requesting reads / writes / etc.). So, a DDR2400 CAS2 is much better than a DDR2100 CAS3 stick. You'll pay the price for it too, so don't think this is a cheap upgrade. However, it's much cheaper now than it was a year ago! The mainboard (motherboard) needs to enable FSB changes, along with CAS changes for the memory, and voltage changes for both the memory and CPU. You picked a winner with that regard. Overall, your choices are not bad. You could make a few better ones, but if you already have that stuff, then by all means, try it out.
Regarding the Athlon XP CPU, it does not come unlocked from AMD, or from normal authorized vendors. You probably can get them unlocked for you, but you will pay extra for that. Unlocking this CPU is an order of magnitude more difficult than it was with the T-bird, which could be done with a lead pencil. You will need to get one of those unlocking kits, such as the one from High Speed PC (
http://www.highspeedpc.com) for around $12. I suggest you try your system first, and see what it will do before trying to unlock it and increasing the multiplier. The Athlon XP procs appear to do well with FSB increases. I'm waiting on my Athlon 2000+ (due for delivery 1-18-02), and although I already have that unlocking kit, I'm going to try out the processor first before trying to unlock it. You probably know this, but unlocking the CPU voids your warranty. I only get a 30-day warranty with mine, so I don't want to mess with it until I pass that first month. If it's going to fail, it will probably fail within the first few weeks, based on those infant mortality reliability curves (the famous bathtub curve).
Ok, that's it. I need to get some sleep. Go ahead, and get that system put together.....
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