Overclock a E8400 on a ASUS P5K Pro

Well, there is two ways I do it:

Method 1: Gradual increases (recommended)

-first, go into the BIOS and find your cpu and fsb and ram clock settings (all BIOSes will be different)
-next, raise your fsb speed and in turn, the cpu speed will increase (I usually go up in increments of 0.1GHz)
-go into advanced bios settings and ensure cpu spread spectrum is disabled (dunno why, just was always told to do this or it wont work)
-reboot, and see what happens

**if it boots, great, run core temp and prime 95 or orthos to determine how stable it is. If it runs for 24 hours without failure, you are pretty much stable at that speed and temp and voltage. If you blue screen or freeze or boot loop, you will have to raise your cpu voltage in the BIOS which can be found very close to the clock speed settings usually. You will need to check the manufacturer of your processor's website to see what they recommend as safe voltages for that processor. In your case, your safest voltage is 1.3625v on the cpu core (vcore). Raise it usually 0.01v or so each time and repeat the prime 95 and core temp process.

This method will take a while but just keep repeating raising speeds and voltages until you hit your max or until you are satisfied. For temps, on the wolfdale processors, try not to let it go anywhere above 70 degrees or so on 100% load is what I would recommend.

Method 2: Set speed, raise voltage

-first, raise your speed of your fsb until you reach the speed you want to achieve
-disable cpu spread spectrum
-reboot, see what happens, if necessary, raise voltage. If not, stress test and raise voltage if necessary.

**just repeat this process until you get 24 hours on full load with temps no higher than 70 on full load with no errors or blue screens or whatever. I don't really recommend this method though, it is risky due to the temps issue. I only use this method when I know exactly what to expect from that specific processor. For example, I knew that on my E8500 with my liquid cooler that 4GHz was not an unreasonable expectation, so I raised it to 4GHz automatically and raised voltage until it was stable and wow, I got an amazingly nice result; 4GHz dual core with nice, low, voltages.

Kinda brief and maybe a little hard to understand...sorry x.x It's a lot easier for me to show people how to do it rather than try to type out a guide. Let me know if you have trouble or more questions <3

Quote:

OK first off if your gonna be ocing you will want to get a after market air cooler. If you stick with your stock cooler you can get a little bit of an oc but its not gonna work out very well.

Another thing is you may wanna look into getting a decent psu. I am not sure what brand came with your case but they usually arent that great. You dont need a huge one, a good 500 or 600w psu will do just fine.

Now you also should take a gander thru some of the many guides on ocing that are stickied to the intel sections. Read up a little on 45nm intel chips, the asus mobo that you have, and the ram you have. This will give ya a little info of where you wanna go. Once you do this come back with some little more specific questions.

Also you will want to update the bios on that board to the latest one from asus. It will help your memory ocing alot.