Bought a new system a week or two ago, with the intention of overclocking. I know its not an amazing system, but I was building on a budget, and it seems to do the job.

Specs :

Intel e7200
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Abit IP35
2 x 1GB Corsair DDR2 800mhz RAM (5-5-5-12)
Coolermaster case and 500w PSU (Good airflow for a budget case)

Kinda new to overclocking, but gave it a go the other day. Have succeeded in raising the FSB up to 294 mhz (294 x 9.5 = 2.79 Ghz) . Various other overclockers have reported 3.8ghz with a moderately similar system to mine (I am only aiming for 3.2 or so).

The issue is, whenever I put the FSB anything higher than 295, the system fails to boot. It powers on, but there is no display on the monitor.

I have tried the following :

Lowering multi - when I go over 295, same issue occurs.
Increasing CPU vcore voltages (up to 1.25) and CPU VDD voltages (cant remember what).
Skipping 295, and trying 300, 305, etc.

Neither of them works. I am stumped to what is going on. At the current overclock, my cpu idles around 49 degrees, and loads at 63ish (judging from CoreTemp).

Just wondered if anyone had any idea why I cant boot above 295? Any suggestions/advice is more than welcome, and I can provide additional information if required.

Thanks in advance, hope you can help an amateur overclocker to bring his CPU up to 3.0Ghz or greater.

At first glance it appears your temperatures are a little high. Have you tried reinstalling your artic freezer 7 pro? If you have some artic silver thermal paste left over, I would highly recommend reinstalling and seeing if the temperatures change. A quote from Newegg Reviews : "This chip is currently Overclocked @ 3.88ghz. I'm running an Artic Cooler 7 heatsink with fan and the chip is not being overvolted at all its set to auto and im using an ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP mb, which has excellent overclocking utilities. My temps are have not gone above 30c and i have been gaming, encoding, decoding dvds, and everything." They have the same cooler as you and haven't gone above 30C. Try a reinstall of the heatsink. If it's not that, it might be the ram have you ran a memtest on the ram? Keep us posted.

I have no paste currently (my cooler came supplied with it). There's a tech shop near me, so going to check it out for some better paste.

Will run a memtest a bit later as well. Thanks for the fast reply.

Sorry for double post, but I meant I have no spare paste currently, need to buy some more before I can reseat it. Can't edit my posts for some reason.

49c idle is quite high. I have a E6550 (clocked only at 2.8 Ghz but still) that idle at 25-27C and hit 40-42C under load. Same cooler.

So as Oakley said : Buy some thermal paste and reseat your cooler.

P.S. the paste that came with the ACF7 Pro is pretty good.

No problem. It seems like it must be seated wrong or maybe the temps are being displayed incorrectly. From searching thru more of the reviews on Newegg most are running right around 30C idle and 40 C load. Which is sadly nowhere near where your temps are. Especially since that cooler is quality and the P35 boards overclock like a champ. Hopefully your brick and mortar store will have some paste for ya, so you can nip this problem in the butt and hit >3.5 Ghz in no time.

Check your RAM timings as well.
Make sure they are 1:1 to make OCing a little simpler.

If it is not set to 1:1, you may be pushing your RAM well beyond DDR2-800.

Another quick question - as my setup is relatively new, will I have to worry too much about what is used to remove the current thermal paste?

I hear about people using alcohol and various chemicals... is this really necessary, or will a paper tissue be adequate?

Okay, reseated my heatsink today, it definitely feels more secure. Had a talk with the guy at my local computer shop, and he didnt have any thermal grease in stock.

However, he told me the correct way to position my heatsink, and I did it.

Temps are now in the high 30s, low 40s at idle. Still a little hot, but should be fine.

I also set my memory ratio or whatever to 1:1, and got to 300 fsb with no issue. Going to push for more a bit later.

Thanks for the help

I have a similar problem I can't go with the fsb above 297, at this fsb the system is not very sable, is stable at 294 and 298 it didn't even post, at 294 after hours of gaming the temps are ok.
My motherboard is an ASUS P5KPL with an intel G31 Chipset and i use 2x1 GB AENEON(ddr2-800, cl5) memory.
In the bios at memory timings I didn't find the option of set the ram to 1:1.
After reading this thread i belive that my ram settings are my major issue.
If someone has a similar mobo and was succesful in overclocking I would much appreciate the helph.
(in fact i hope to get 9x333=3Ghz )

Could be an issue of needing to adjust jumpers on the motherboard itself to ensure 1:1 ratio for your ram. Review your MB manual to see if there are jumper settings for OC'ing.