New EPoX 9NPA+Ultra & 3200 Venice rig, please help!

[valdamax]

Hi guys, I was encouraged to check this forum out with an inquiry I have as I'm a first time EPoX consumer. NewEgg has shipped the components for a new PC gaming rig I've been saving up for, and I've been trying to aim for the best bang for my buck. What I'm looking for is some help on trying to get the best BIOS settings/OCing tweaks to the system without going overboard - something stable for what I have that won't burn out in a year. Here's what's arriving tomorrow:

Mobo: EPoX 9NPA+Ultra
Video Card: Sapphire X800 XL Ultimate (FedEx delivered it while writing this message!!)
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 160GB 7200.7 (SATA/NCQ)
PSU: Cooler Master Real Power 450W
CPU: Venice 3200 (model ADA3200BPBOX)
RAM: Corsair ValueSelect PC3200
Case: Antec 3700BQE (was a painful budget decision to swap out the bundled 350W SmartPower for the Cooler Master in order to go with a native 24 pin PSU to avoid burn out on the 12V rail)

I'll be applying Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste on the CPU (and am wondering if I should do so on the video card as well), and bought a Zalman's 7700-Cu for the HSF.

I'm wondering if anybody can provide me with any pointers or advice on what overclock settings I should aim for with this rig, or any advice from experience as to what I should aim to do when putting this together out of the box - ie, should I flash with latest BIOS from EPoX before anything else?

I regret in retrospect the RAM purchase for the more serious OC speeds, but am hoping to achieve at last a stable 2.65GHz speed with this system, if it's possible. I think aiming for 2.8GHz is out of this system's league, and if it were possible, would just burn out the processor within a year. Please provide any comments or thoughts, suggestions, etc!

 

[RobbyG]

There's no guarantee on exactly what OC you will get with this board, your best best is to follow Zebo's OC guide and see what you can hit. You are right that the VS memory probably won't allow you to do a 1:1 overclock, but don't be afraid to use a divider to achieve your best settings.

For the Bios question - I'm still using the 03/22/05 Bios and it works great for me. This was the last Bios before X2 support was added. I've read mixed results on the newer Bios versions so you might want to read the big 9NPA thread here to see what the others have to say. One nice thing about the newer Bios versions is that you get support for more memory dividers which might help you in your OC.

Good luck!