Okay, this will make me sound like a complete newbie to some, but yeh, I hardly have ever dabbled in this paranormal business of overclocking.

First, my comp specs are available on the site if you know how to access it, but if you don't, here it is:
P4 2.4C Northwood
Gigabyte GA8IPE1000
2x512mb kingston PC2700 (yeh, I know this is less than the max I can use, but I didn't pay for the comp. Will upgrade later)
MSI Geforce FX5600 (not an OC friendly graphics I heard)
120gb Seagate SATA
and some other peripherals that don't need mentioning.

Can't find out model of casing, but it currently has 1x120mm exhaust near PSU, 2x80mm inhales, top and side. Working pretty well.

anyway, when running at 2.4ghz, full load will give a temp of about 35C according to MBM5. Here's the clincher: I OCed to 3.0 (locked AGP and mem speeds) and found that full load only goes up to 30C. I got a feeling something's not right, but left it running for another 30 mins with a CPU burn in program (and it said it was perfectly stable). And after that reduced it back to 2.4ghz.

Any idea why at all it'll run at a lower temp? Nothing else changed (fan speeds, program run, voltage, etc).

Also, I'm interested to continue having my computers running 24/7, will OC cause any problems assuming I never let CPU temps go above 40?

Can I push my RAM speeds? What RAM would you recommend if I want to replace these crawling ones, with overclocking in mind of course (I run dual channel)?

I know this board is pretty sick of overclocking threads, but if you really hate OC threads, ignore this thread :angel:

run cpu-z to verify the actual clock speeds.get yourself some corsair, but check first. your board/cpu combo may not let you push the ram too far. the ddr 400 clock speed (200 mhz) should be equal to your fsb (200 mhz at hyper threading). if you try to push the cpu by upping the fsb speed, make sure the ram goes up with it or you will experience lower performance and possibly unstability. what are your stock and altered cpu/fsb/ram speeds, according to cpu-z?

Yah Sound like RAM and remember do go stupid with inyel chips overclocking them they can not take heat well they may O/C "better at time then AMD but they will Cook faster then AMD aswell.

Sry for late reply, internet got cut for a week due to credit card probs :P

CPU: 2411mhz
FSB: 201.0mhz
RAM: 160.8mhz

I'll follow up with another post on overclocked settings...

CPU: 3006.9mhz
FSB: 250.6mhz
RAM: 167.0mhz.

And yeh, my m/b allows me to lock mem and AGP bus speeds.

It runs fine, but as mentioned, temp drops instead of increasing as expected. No change in voltage.

Also, I'm interested in increasing RAM speeds, I'm wondering how much I can push it.

you prabably won't be able to get it (your ram) run much faster, but a bit of experimentation will tell you how far you can push your parts. just be smart about it, as overclocking can potentially damage hardware.

yeh, I know about the risks... which is why I'm running it at its clock speed at the moment.

The main concern is whether I've got the temperature right, I can't believe running at 3.0ghz is cooler than 2.4ghz.

Will see how much I can push....