questions: building 1st pc - Duron overclocking

[garynjill]

I am about to put together my first PC with the following components:
Antec SX830 case, 300w power supply
ABIT KT7a-Raid mobo
Duron 800(RETAIL)
256mb Industry Standard PC133 ram
Quantum Fireball Plus AS 40gig (ATA100, 7200 rpm)
HP 9150i cd-rw
ATI Rage Fury Pro (32 mb)
Guillemot Maxi Sound Muse sound card

I would eventually like to try overclocking this system, but my first priority is to get it running stable with no tweaking.
Here are some of my questions:
Should I scrape the thermal tape off the Duron/heatsink and use a thermal compound instead?
Should I try to connect bridges right away, even if I am not overclocking right away.
If I don't get them connected correctly the first time, will the CPU still work, just not be unlocked?
Pencil or conductive ink?

I was originally thinking that I wouldn't try to connect the bridges right away, but is it better to do it right away, before putting on the heatsink rather than taking the chip out later and removing the heatsink?

Any tips, tricks, advice, opinions, etc (don't be limited to the duron overclocking stuff)you can give me is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Gary

 

[inwoosac]

i connected the bridges on my druon 800 right away..
i took a pencil...and did it but it was so sloppy under a 30x manifier...
so i cut really really small notches on a cardboard......and used that as a templete over the bridges to use my .5 mm m-pencil..to make dark stright lines...
got it to work ont he first try
yes use thermal compound..."artic silver"..

pencil works fine so far

 

[Pederv]

The prefered method is to remove the heatsink pad and relace it with higher quality compound (ie Artic Silver). If you don't have any artic silver and want to order it, then replace the exsisting compound with radio shack stuff, for now. I'd say go with getting your system up and running the way you want before trying to overclock, especially since this is your first try. Either method you use to close the bridges may require you to remove the HSF and CPU a few times, until you get it right. I'd save the bridges until you get the artic silver, so you can replace the compound at the same time you try and connect the bridges. Conductive ink is more reliable, but the pencil is cheaper, I went more permanent and soldered the bridges. If you don't connect all of the bridges then what will happen is you'll get "holes" in your multiplier ability. What I mean is you may be able to set x8, x8.5, x9.5, x10 notice x9 is missing, but other than that if you don't overclock it won't be a problem.