I was wondering how exactly to overclock without hurting anything. I had a problem with my old 486 which burnt up. What do I need to do to overclock? I have a biostar M7NCD board, AMD AthlonXP 2700+ (thoroughbred) proc (i think it's a 2163 166x13), 512 pc2100 ram, GeForce FX5500oc Vid card. I already have a lot of cooling put into the computer. Right now I have a total of 9 cooling fans not counting the psu, pcu, or vid card fans. I have a custom thermal take pcu cooler also. (Copper core) any suggestions on what to do to oc it or any specific programs?

Nine case fans is definitely overkill in my book, but to each his own. You're not gonna be able to overclock with PC2100 RAM. The CPU & RAM should both run at the same speed...right now, your CPU is running at 166MHz (333FSB) & your RAM is running at 133MHz (DDR266), so the RAM is bottlenecking your system. You'd need at least PC2700 just to run both at 166MHz. You'd be better off to get PC3200...the price difference is minimal & it will run at 200MHz+. The problem with overclocking your CPU is the high default multiplier of 13x. It's probably locked, so you're stuck with it. Changing the FSB to 200MHz will put the CPU speed at 2.6GHz (13 x 200MHz) & a hefty boost in CPU voltage will probably be necessary...even so, there's no guarantee that it'll run at that speed. Asus A7N8X-X 1800+ @ 8 x 210MHz 512MB PC3200 Asus Ti4800SE 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro

Sorry...I made a mistake...it actually is pc2700 ram...you were talking about increasing the voltage and changing the fsb...is there a program that I can dl to do this? If not how so would I go about doing this? Thanks again for the help!!