Noob questions on my setup

[pettieo]

Hey all! I just got all of my parts in last night and spent the whole night building and playing with my computer. I am relatively new at OC'in, I understand the basic way of changing everything (even though my new bios was kind of confusing). To answer a couple more things first, I have read the noobs guide to OC'ing on the forums here, and I understand it, but I also know that every setup has different limitations and such. So after all of that, finally my questions. First what is a good (and safe) overclock for my setup? Here is what I have:

Antec Nine Hundred
EVGA LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX
BFG Tech GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 320-bit
OCZ GameXStream 700W
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
ZALMAN CNPS9500
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800
Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s


My second question is (I know its dumb but i might as well ask) the program that came with my mobo seems to be made to find an overclock in your computer (puts it through tests and such, so it seems), should I use this or stick with the good 'ol Bios and test way?

And lastly, for now, is I have noticed on the system monitoring program that came with the mobo has the V consumptions in different colors, most are green but 1 is yellow and 2 are red, does that mean i am putting too much power into them? or too little? (I know this probably can only be answered by people who have the mobo or program)


P.S. I was playing with different overclocks last night (probably foolishly) and got it up to 3.4 stable at 40C on full load with Prime95. @ 3.6 I couldn't get because Prime95 found an error every time I tried

 

[mr_hayt]

I know that this isn't going to be a popular response, but I'm pressing forward anyway. Don't bother with an overclock on your system. There is no need for it at this time and it will just shorten the life expectancy of your computer. Wait until games start to slow down to overclock.

 

[pettieo]

Is there anything i should do to increase preformance in any way? Because are the stock settings really efficient? (ram, videocard, etc.)?

 

[aevm]

I'm with mr_hayt here. If you don't have a good reason to overclock then don't do it. Not yet, at least.

If you are doing it just to impress the girlfriend, buy her flowers instead. She will appreciate it more.

 

[Kari]

Or just use the stock voltages (NOT the auto settings) and see how far it goes, this way it won't shorten the life expectancy in any measurable manner...

You could run BOINC when you got the OC working fine, just to put the computing power in to good use
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

 

[ComputerCustomizer]

I second running BOINC on it.
I run BOINC on all of my computers because it's cool do donate to science when it doesn't harm me at all.

 

[pettieo]

sounds good, thanks all!