Good specific info on overclocking...awesome. I wanted to contribute some general information:
To pull off some good overclocking, you are taking the first key steps...questions and research. You should find a ton of great things on the net if you look hard enough... this site has some great info, but also check out tomshardware.com sharkeyexteme.com as both have good overclocking guides.
use Google like you never have before. Type into google: BRAND MODEL# REVIEW for any item and it will give you a good jump start. I never depend on just one review, I look for a wider approval from sites that actually test for overclocking.
don't have any weak links. As stated above very well, each of the components must be optimized for optimal overclocking. You must have a very good heatsink, very good Ram a step faster than what you really need (cas 2, not 2.5, Crucial, Corsair, Mushkin, Geil, XMS, OCZ are a few of the performance DDR modules out there) and look for modules that have been hand picked or screeened, and the most important thing, very good M/B. Recent Epox boards have some great O/C numbers, and Abit has been the king for a while, Soyo has regained its lost aura, Asus always has good boards, but they also sell some slugs. Wear out their websites, and the good boards always have links to hardware reviews, usually on the same page. You will need to research some chipsets to master this. An out of the Box system just will not have components you can use to get great results, you will have to DIY Build.
The good stuff will cost some extra coin though, but for the best prices, check out pricegrabber.com or pricewatch.com. A little extra work will save you some bank. To protect yourself, there is great service called resellerratings.com that will tell you the quality of online merchants. To start with newegg.com and essencompu.com are two that offer both great prices and great service. These are all O/C tools that people never mention.
don't set your expectations too high. There are factors involving pure chance that you cannot control, like the internal quality of the CPU you get. Some clock faster, some don't. Do your best, but don't feel bad if you don't get a 50% improvement. I overclocked my PIII 700 and only got up to like 775 and was crushed. But I found later on the net, no one could overclock this chip, and it was not my fault.
Take a look at some of the Benchmarks and you will see some of them are using some exotic cooling systems, dry ice, peltiers, and other stuff that comes right out of a physics lab. Its just not practical to run a system with Dry Ice everyday, so you may not achieve the same results they did.
Take a close look at the test systems reviewers use. If you read a M/B review, the RAM they use for the system will say a lot even if it is not the focus. If you start seeing 20 review sites using the same RAM, there may be a reason for it. This should give you a place to start looking, but one site's use of an item should not a sale make, look for a wider concensous.
Have fun. The most overlooked part is that it can be great fun, you make a lot new friends, and learn more about computers than you ever really wanted to know. In the end though not only do you have a faster machine, you have conquered the mountain and raised your flag in victory.
Enjoy and good luck.
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