dragon's computer gets o.c. to max

i assembled my beloved computer in 2007 june holiday, after dismantling the previous athlon 900 desktop & a toshiba laptop bought in year 2001.

i had only 1k budget from dad, and out of 250 bucks goes to the 17' LCD monitor. so, a core 2 duo e4300 processor, asus P965 motherboard, 1GB DDR2-667 RAM and an nVidia 8500GT graphic card & a coolermaster steel chassis seemed to the the best combination based on the budget.

people kept telling me i made the wrong choice cuz 1k was enough to get faster stuff, such as e6300 and 8600GT if i would pick a lower-end motherboard and aluminium alloy chassis.

i wouldn't do that. it's short sighted. i knew what exactly i was doing.

now, time to give 'em sorry thoughts:

step 1: a few days ago, when RAM price dropped to the bottom, i got another 1GB module for just 20 bucks. 2 modules of RAM work in pair to build up a symmetrical dual channel giving double bandwidth. people who bought 2GB RAM in one module and lower-end motherboard two years ago can't do the same thing as me (their MB doesn't recognize RAM larger than 3GB).

step 2: in the CMOS configuration i forced the processor to pace with 333MHz external clock instead of the default 200MHz. in order to keep it stable, i turned off the C1E & speedstep energy saving functions and increased the core voltage by 0.075V. then i lock the PCI-E bus clock at 101MHz and PCI bus at 33.33MHz. now the e4300 is working stably at 3GHz instead of the original 1.8GHz with the 1333MHz FSB bandwidth. E6xx0 series have no o.c. potential because their external clock is already very high; even if they do, lower-end motherboards with insufficient FSB bandwidth would become a bottle neck to the performance.



step 3: my RAM was bought with guidance from some hardware guru, i picked the best ones by the chipset serial number. though they were labeled as DDR2-667 (333MHz), but they can be easily o.c. to 400MHz and become DDR2-800. however when the FSB:DRAM ratio is 4:5, i have to make it run even faster, i.e. 418MHz.

overclocking a processor by 66% with no extra hydro-cooling system or liquid nitrogen or any additional expenditure in o.c. devices - all because i chose a quality motherboard and a liable chassis. only dragon does it. now my computer has caught up with the 2009 standard.

p.s. to those who suggested me to buy e6300, find a corner and kick your own balls.