Mother board: MSI K7N2 delta ILSR
CPU: AMD Barton 2500+
Ram: 2x512mb corsair 3200 llpt

I am in the process of overclocking my cpu, i have raised the fsb from 166 to 187, any more than that and the pc tends to crash alot, i believe this is due to lack of power to the cpu, but i do not know what voltages are required. i aim to raise the fsb to 200. Cpu temp is 32 Celcius when idle and 41 Celcius under full load so temperature is not an issue right now.

I have pheoenix award bios and have a seperate page in the bios for changing the voltages, the cpu voltage is set to "by h/w" so i do not know what the default voltage is. If anyone has the answer for me it would be greatly appreacitated.

Many thanks

AthlonXP 2500+ @ clock is 1833MHz (166x11.0) with 1.65v, the best way to get the best overclocking is to drop the multiplier to 10X or 10.5X from 11X and then see how high you can go with the FSB before you start having stability issues.

Leave the FSB @ your most stable frequency, and then start increasing the multiplier, you can't go beyond 11X on the multiplier because the newer 2500+ CPU's are factory locked.

When you get to the max settings you can for both then you can start increasing the CPU Vcore from 1.65v one notch @ a time till you get to your overclocking plateau, keep an eye on your temp readings while doing this you wanna stay anywhere between 35°C - 45°C CPU idle temps.

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The multiplier is probably locked, so that's not an option.

All Bartons run at 1.65v, so there's your default voltage. I wouldn't overvolt too much...but you're safe at 1.70, 1.75, even 1.80v. It probably wouldn't hurt to raise your RAM voltage a bit...default is usually 2.5v...but you're safe at 2.6 or 2.7v. Take the time to test your RAM too.

http://www.memtest86.com

If you have the option to do so, lock the PCI/AGP at their defaults (33/66mhz), otherwise they'll overclock along with the FSB...at 187mhz, the PCI is running at 37.4mhz...that's about the safe max. Much higher than that & you can expect problems.

Your temps are great so you have nothing to worry about in that respect. Keep an eye on them though...

One other thing to check would be the PSU. This gets mentioned a lot, but check the amps on the +12v rail. The Athlon gets it's power entirely from the +12v & uses about 8-10 amps. The HDD, optical drive, fans also use the +12v, so you need 16-18 amps to have all the bases covered.