Overclocking 965 black edition with H50

Welcome to the forums.

Post all your spec's so we can have a better understanding of what we are working with.

I am just starting to benchmark my Phenom II 965 BE processor, I used multiplier only to get to 4GHz at 1.4 v, then upped to 1.46 v to get stable. The only stability testing I have done so far is with the AMD Overdrive stability test, and Everest Ultimate.

For day to day needs, windows 7 runs very stable for me @ 4GHz anywhere between 1.41 - 1.46 volts, so other than when doing stability tests or benchmarking, I will likely reduce my voltage to 1.41 to get longer life out of my processor, I have been able to hit 4.2 Ghz at 1.46 volts, not as stable, but will settle for 4GHz, that was my original target and hit it with ease on 2nd day...

I'm not a heavy duty gamer, mostly record TV and movies and burn to DVD with My Hauppauge TV Tuner, so I don't need to go balls out with my overclock...

well the computer is being built by a friend of mine, but ideal specs are 965BE, 2gb Ram1333mhz(uping to 4-6) H50 cooler. HD 5770 Windows 7 x64 650W sli/crossfire ready.
motherboard is still being sorted out. was going to be the MSI 770-G45, but may be switching it to ECS A790GXM-AD3.

Well it really depends on the board you get, different boards have different Bios's and the settings will different also.

Let us know what board you decide on so we can get an idea of what settings need to be adjusted.

Normally you should be able to hit 4Ghz just by raising the vcore to about 1.45v+, multi will have to be raised to 20x and the most important part of this process is making sure your RAM is stable.

Dont use any programs to overclock, always use the Bios. People tend to use both the Bios and programs like overdrive but that only makes things worse because once you set something in the Bios and boot to Windows if you have different settings in overdrive it can currupt your harddrive and you will endup having to re-install Windows.