Noob overclocker needs some advice

Hi i recently tried overclocking my E2200 to 2.93 GHz(original is 2.2 GHz)

Once i hit the 3.02 GHz, BSOD on startup/loadup

i keep my RAM speed at AUTO

i did not change the voltage nor multiplier

my specs are

ASUS P5Q
Pentium Dual Core E2200 @ 2.2GHz
3 GB's RAM @ 667

could it be the RAM thats limiting me or do i need to raise voltage

im REALLY scared im going to damage my components

Thanks in advance

I'm not sure if the guide Shadow703793 suggests this but what I tend to do is:

1) Find my RAM's max overclock by setting motherboard ratio to something crazy (2:5 if possible), lowering the CPU multiplier, and bringing up the FSB until Memtest starts complaining.

2) Drop back the RAM to a low speed and loose timings, and start to find the max FSB overclock, keeping the CPU multiplier low.

3) Bring up the multiplier until you get close to where you want to be while remaining stable

4) Adjust the multiplier, FSB, and RAM clocks until you hit a 1:1 ratio and are roughly where you want to be.


Example: I found that my CPU can hit 3321 MHz (368x9), my RAM can hit 1249 MHz, and northbridge starts complaining at ~1700 MHz. After a while I tried tightening up the timings on the RAM, and could only get to about 900 MHz at CL4. So... a bit of math later and I ended up at:
CPU @ 3.2 GHz (400x8, 1600 MHz FSB), RAM @ 800 MHz CL4 (1:1 ratio)
After that it was just a case of finding out how low I could bring voltages before I started bluescreening...

Whole process took about 2 weeks (mainly because I wanted to make sure the system was stable after 24 hours of Prime95, and could go through a full run of Memtest, including the 2 optional tests)

@Kraynor: Due to the limits of the CPU OCing (heat,voltage,FSB,etc) there is no need to OC DDR2 667 RAM until you hit 1333 FSB (333) for the CPU. The E2xxx series is limited to MAX(meaning no ridiculous voltages, safe temps,etc and P95 stable 6hrs at least) of 3.4Ghz, meaning it only takes up to FSB 309 (on the E2200) to hit 3.4Ghz with a 11x multi and 1:1 RAM:FSB. There is no real world performance with faster RAM.