I am fairly new to the world of PC's so please forgive my ignornace! I purchased a super Win XP SP3 3GHZ system last year, which I have managed to over clock to 3.466 Ghz. When i go any higher in the BIOS the system crashes. Is there any way to over clock the system any higher? Not sure of the technical specs I am afraid. Best Wishes and many thanks,Chris EGBB

Before anyone is going to be able to help you are going to need to list your CPU, CPU heatsink and fan combo (HSF), motherboard and ram at the very least.A great place to get help for over clocking iswww.overclock.netThey have both AMD and Intel dedicated forums.

I am fairly new to the world of PC's so please forgive my ignornace! I purchased a super Win XP SP3 3GHZ system last year, which I have managed to over clock to 3.466 Ghz. When i go any higher in the BIOS the system crashes. Is there any way to over clock the system any higher? Not sure of the technical specs I am afraid. Best Wishes and many thanks,Chris EGBB

You *might* be able to overclock further, but you'll need to do a lot more work than you appear to be interested in doing. You could start by listing the specs and we can help you from there. Saying you have a 3GHz processor @ 3.46GHz isn't at all helpful.

Many thanks Chaps I am 92 so this is all very new to me!I have managed to get this from the Nvida control panel.Brand = Intel® Core2 Extreme CPU X9650 @ 3.00GHz overclocked to 3.45 Ghz, Win XP SP3, Geforce 8800 Ultra.Thank you very much Chris EGBB

I'm fairly sure you could push this CPU at least to 4.0 without any trouble, there are couple of important things to mention:You have an unlocked CPU, which is the best for overclocking. You can use your unlocked multiplier to multiply the FSB to achieve the desired clock. What is IMPERATIVE to do is to watch your temperatures under full load (use Orthos, Prime95 or any similar tool to heat up the CPU).In BIOS you have to disable all things like C1E at al. They are all limiting the overclock.And then gotta start smart with raising the multi and voltage of the CPU. I never really did the OC with the extreme CPU, but I do it in general with my normal CPUs, and only difference I can see that you only have two things, multi and Vcore.If it's unstable when you go higher, raise Vcore, then see if stable. Check temperature all the time (google Core Temp). If it goes over 85c, you are way too high. Should be kept below 80c on full load after some time. For 24/7 operation shouldn't go over 75c, just to be safe.Keep in mind that memory controller (DDR Voltage) might need a bump in the voltage, I know i7 need that, don't remember if older Core2Duos/Quads need it.Northbridge probably don't need any change, since you are not changing the FSB (or you could to achieve more precise clock).My experience was in the past with my C2D (which applies also to quads) to fix all the important voltages, where the system would more stable.More infos:http://www.anandtech.com/show/2404