Safe amount to overclock on a Pentium 4

[MikeRB85]

I just transferred my 2.53 GHZ Northwood Processor to a new case/motherboard. The case is a Thermaltake Tsunami with 2 120mm fans (front/back) and a 90mm side fan. I also bought an Aerocool X-Raider heatsink for my Pentium 4.

I was thinking of overclocking my cpu since it seems to be running very cool at 25 degrees celcius. I don't know a lot about overclocking, but there seems to be an easy way to just increase my FSB through the EasyTune5 program provided by my Gigabyte motherboard. There is also an advanced overclocking section, but I don't think I want to deal with that right now. I noticed I can increase the MHZ by about 500 MHZ at the max, but I just want to safely overclock the cpu a couple hundred MHZ.

Anything I should be concerned about when overclocking, or should I just watch my CPU temp? I know it runs cool at 25 degrees Celcius right now, but what's a cool temp. range for my P4 to operate at?

Thanks.

 

[Furen]

When you raise the frontside bus you also overclock your ram. you should be able to get a little bit out of the ram but to if you find instability you'll need to either use a divider or loosen the timings and/or raise the ram voltage.

 

[IEC]

There's no "safe" overclocking - all overclocking is a compromise between performance and component life. That said, if you plan on using your current parts for < 2 years, it's fine to overclock. I've had OC'ed rigs last as long as 5-6 years, so YMWV.