Ok, im just back from holiday and thought i'd give this another go (was having too many blue screens before) so far, ive clocked to 2.8GHz as you can see from this: http://i29.tinypic.com/2r5rhit.png Here is a screenie of my bios settings at the moment: http://i30.tinypic.com/24696rs.png also, temperature under 7 hours orthos blend test, max was 35° on core 1 & 34° on core 2. this is from everest: Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L Front Side Bus Properties: Bus Type Intel AGTL+ Bus Width 64-bit Real Clock 400 MHz (QDR) Effective Clock 1600 MHz Bandwidth 12800 MB/s OCZ XTC Platinum DDR2-8500 1066 x2 (5-5-5-15 @ 400 MHz) (4-5-5-13 @ 333 MHz) (3-4-4-10 @ 266 MHz) Bus Type Dual DDR2 SDRAM Bus Width 128-bit DRAM:FSB Ratio 1:1 Real Clock 400 MHz (DDR) Effective Clock 800 MHz Bandwidth 12800 MB/s Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU External Clock 400 MHz Maximum Clock 4000 MHz Current Clock 2800 MHz soooooo.....can anyone tell me what i should do next regarding cpu speed, memory, and voltages, and whether or not i should keep them as they are? thanks..oh, and here's a pic of my work in progress http://i30.tinypic.com/2cp418k.png Vista nVidia Evolution SP2 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6550 @ 2.8GHz XFX GeForce 9800 GTx GB OCZ Platinum 1066 2x Samsung 1TB Spinpoint F1

OK, I know I've told you to set the PCIe freq at 100MHz...you still have it on AUTO. That means it will overclock anytime the CPU frequency isn't set at one of the 'standard' frequencies (266, 333, 400). Right now it's OK, but as soon as you increase the CPU freq, the PCIe will increase as well & that is NOT good. I think you've pretty much reached the max though. Your CPU & RAM can definitely do better but unfortunately, your motherboard/chipset is pretty much at it's limit. And with such a low CPU multi of 7, even if you were able to squeeze another 10-20MHz out of the freq, you'd only be gaining 70-140MHz overall....certainly not enough to 'make or break' you in terms of performance. If you had a decent P45 board, I'm sure you could do well over 3.0GHz but with the G31, it ain't gonna happen.

thanks jam, yeh, i know about the pci, it reset itself to auto after my last boot fail, just forgot to change it back!! i was looking at new m/b's tonight, any ideas for £100-£150 price range? here's what i f ound... http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products... http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp... ...also, i have the chance to get the asus for £78 if i make a decision like now!! instead of around 140 *edit i just bought the asus in case i never got that deal again! Vista nVidia Evolution SP2 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6550 @ 2.8GHz XFX GeForce 9800 GTx 4GB OCZ Platinum 1066 2x Samsung 1TB Spinpoint F1