I wanted to over clock my E6550(2.33GHz) to 3.0Ghz, i running a MSI P6N SLI-FI motherboard, i have 2gb of DDR2-800 ram, Nvidia 8600 GT(PCI-e), 700w power supply,and XP Home. Any tips or step-by-step would be awesome! Thanks!

I think you're going to have a hard time doing that. Your motherboard supports up to a 1333 MhZ FSB, and the multiplier for the E6550 is probably locked at 7; That means that if you run the FSB at 1333 MhZ(clock speed of 333 MhZ), you will omnly get the processor up to 2.333 GhZ. I have an E6550 and the multiplier is locked at 7, but I am able to increase the FSB of my motherboard beyond 1333 MhZ.

Having checked the motherboard manual, it doesn't state if it can go beyond a 333MHz FSB, therefore it is unlikely you will be able to overclock the CPU to 3GHz as you would need to run a 429MHz FSB (7 x 429 = 3003). Not only that, but without more detail regarding your RAM, that too is likely to be a limiting factor. Just enjoy it for what it is as I doubt you would see much of a difference anyway. My Amiga 500 Rocks!!!

If you're reaaly set on overclocking your motherboard, I would read the MSI forums for that motherboard to see if anyone has successfully pushed it beyong the stated limit of 1333 MhZ. You would probably have to play with voltages as well.

the forum ur looking for is: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread... and http://forums.anandtech.com/message... welcome to the p6n family ;). and u should be able to get a fairly decent overclock even though you are at 1333 to start with. Core 2 Quad q6600 2.4GHz@ 2.9GHz 323x9 MSI P6N-FI nforce650i Mb 3GB OCZ RAM DDR2800@645 2x250GB HDD in RAID 0 2xDVD-RW Foxconn 8800GTS 320mb 630/1410/1840 ATI TV 550pro FSP 700w

"u should be able to get a fairly decent overclock even though you are at 1333 to start with"-I agree with zcubed. I should have stated that my Asus motherboard also has a stated limit of a 1333 MhZ FSB, but I did not have a problem increasing the FSB to 1600 MhZ(400 MhZ clock speed). Of course, you would then run your RAM at it's natural frequency of 800 MhZ(400 MhZ clock speed). Then you would get your processor at 2.8 GhZ, which is not far from 3.0 GhZ. Of course you could try for more, but that might be pushing it too far.

sweet, thanks alot zcubed and kx5m2g! 2.8 is good enough for me, ill try it later! you guys rock! ps. kx5m2g, you thing you could give me a step by step on how to change my FSB to 400 mhz? im sure its easy and i could figure it out myself, but i'd rather hear it from someone in my situation.