Im very new to this overclocking thing but I wanted to see what all the hype was about to I said what the heck and overclocked totally unprepared luckily things went smoothly

I'm running a q6600 with a gigabyte DS3L @ 3Ghz, memory is CORSAIR XMS2 2GB

My temps idle are 34 31 34 31

At load they are 55 54 55 53

Now when I overclocked I based my setting on this picture I found

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/224 [...] 75a8_o.jpg

and this thread

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] erclocking

Only difference in mine is the multiplier is a 9x, FSB 333, my memory multiplier is at 2.40 giving me 800 and 800, and the bottom settings are Manuel, everything normal except the Vcore which I have at 1.27

I ran it on Prime95 for around 8 hours seems fine

Now my questions are

1) My computer seems to be running slower than before the overclock especially the load times Firefox before took around 1 second to load up now it takes maybe 3 also the overall start up time of the computer seems slower now as well. Another side effect I've noticed is weird mouse movements like for example I'll just be browsing the internet and my mouse will freeze for only a tiny millisecond but it's still noticeable

Any ideas? Wrong Settings?

2) Is my ram overclocked ? Which setting in the picture is to oveclock the memory ? Like I said I'm new at this and I rushed through this I've done some research but on most of the topics I don't really understand due to terms that I'm not in knowledge with

3) Will me going higher say 3.4Ghz with 1.4 Vcore shorten my processors lifespan by a noticeable amount? Is it stable because I do alot of Audio production and it would hurt for my computer to crash every now and then

Thanks in advance

Before anything, read the C2D guide on OCing to get a further insight on OCing. If you don't know how to Oc the ram, you're in trouble.

1.) Very possible that ram is unstable or has issues with the setting it's in. Have you stress test using blend for 12hours?

2.) It has to do with FSB and memory multiplier. Read the OCing guide for more detail.

3.) Will it shorten the life? Yes. Noticeable? Depends. Under normal usage, I would fully expect it to last at least 3years, if not longer. If the PC crashes, it's one of two things: Either the PC is unstable or there's program conflicts of some sort. I'm guessing it's unstable.