I have a 3400+@2.6ghz. My cpu runs at about 40°C with 50% load. Would putting a fan opposite rather than a duct help to bring down the temperature at all. Also to achieve this overclock i have only raised my fsb speed from 200mhz to 217mhz what else could i change to increase performance or to make my overclock more stable.

You should always attempt to get your FSB and memory to a proper ratio, preferrably 1 to 1. So if you set your FSB to 217 MHz, set your memory to 217 MHz as well. But instead of doing that, set both higher in increments of 5 MHz or so, and slowly go higher from there. If you freeze up or crash, set it down a level. Also, setting the HTT multiplier lower can let you set your FSB higher without instability. Google some of the forums on overclocking. They are all really descriptive and most of them are newb-friendly =)

There's absolutely nothing wrong with "40°C with 50% load"...your temp is fine & you really don't have to do anything. It would help if you provided your system specs. I assume this is an Athlon64? And don't confuse the terminology...the A64 has no FSB. It uses a HyperTransport bus which is designed to run at 800MHz on a S754 system. CPU speed = CPU Freq x CPU multi...in your case, default is 200MHz x 12 = 2.4GHz HT bus = CPU freq x HT multi...in you system, default is 200MHz x 4 = 800MHz. Depending on your board's chipset, the HT bus doesn't usually like to be overclocked. To allow you to overclock the CPU Freq, you'd have to lower the HT multi to 3x, then you could theoretically raise the CPU Freq to as high as 266MHz without over-overclocking the HT bus. 3 x 266MHz = 800MHz HT bus 12 x 266MHz = 3.192GHz CPU speed I'm not saying you'd be able to overclock that high, these are just theoretical numbers. There are other factors like AGP bus, CPU voltage, RAM speed, etc that have to be considered as well.

I see that skyfear posted about the CPU/RAM ratio. While 1:1 ratio is usually preferable, it's not as critical to the A64 system as it is with previous AMD systems or the P4. For example, you can run the RAM freq at 200MHz & CPU freq at 250MHz w/o taking a huge performance hit.

Also how can i test for stability quickly once booted to windows? I am asking this because when i set the fsb to 218mhz it crashed after about 5mins so i would like to know any stability issues as soon as possible.

Also (sorry guys) i don't seem to have any of these options in my bios. Is there any way i can overclock my cpu further using software? or is it time to let go of my motherboard? P.s i'm not too hot on the idea of flashing bios.

All BIOS's don't list the settings the same...you have to figure out what's what. If you're not lowering the HT multi, locking the AGP at 66MHz, & configuring your RAM so it won't overclock along with the CPU freq, you're never gonna get anywhere. You probably don't need to flash the BIOS & overclocking via software sucks. Most of the time, the overclock settings reset everytime you reboot, then you have to reset them all over again. Overclocking thru the BIOS is the way to go. Post your specs...board make/model, exact CPU, RAM, video card, & PSU. Once I know that, I'll download your manaul, then suggest some BIOS settings to get you going...