Need help overclocking my CPU please

I overclocked one of my son's friend's UD3/fx4100 to 4.4Ghz and it pulls some power.

You may need to update your BIOS and disable APM so that your chip doesn't bail out of your OC under load and downclock itself. (If your board even has an update for that function. My UD3 requires BIOS version F8 to get control of that function.)

After you get the heatsink for you VRM, you could try bumping your Vcore a bit and then up the frequency. It will come down to your personal risk/reward comfort zone, but with your VRM layout, I would probably stay at that clock/voltage, add the heatsink, and call it good.

That sounds nice but since im such a noob could you break that dow for me alittle please? lol

APM = advanced power management. It causes your CPU to throttle down to a slower speed under load so it doesn't exceed it's power rating.

When you disable this function your processor stays at it's max speed under load.

The VRM is the section on your motherboard that provides power to your CPU. (It includes the MOSFETs you are getting a heatsink for). More voltage = more stress/heat on the VRM.

The thing with overclocking always comes down to voltage , in order to get the higher overclocks you need voltage added to the cpu to pull that off. When you had the cpu at 20.5x and running at 4500mhz you the tried playing a saved game of Skyrim and it started freezing. That would be the time to add voltage to get it to not freeze and to run smoothly. Any time you are overcloacking when you up the multiplier and add voltage you go into Windows to verify stability and if stable then you stress the cpu to verify stable under load , plus heat management.
Thios is a process that's tedious and requires a lot of patience and time with the bottom line being to get stable ad voltage and it's not just adding what you think will do it you have to add the smallest increment because the objective is to get the stable overclock with the smallest amount of voltage.
Keep a log of every step you make so that you have a reference to go back to if needed and you can see how much of what you added. don't forget to save your final overclock as a profile in the bios so if there was a bios reset for some reason you can just load your profile. Some motherboards let you keep several profiles and that allows you to load a certian one for a certian function.

Thank you guys for breaking all that down for me. Im learnin little by little.

That sounds like what i want to do. Now how do i verify stability in windows. I have aq stability test built into AMD overdrive that i considered running. And do you have some ballpark figures for a voltage limit for my mobo and cpu and a realistic temp limit?

There is not any kind of list that you can go by because overclocking is trial and error. The one thing I can tell you is this , reset your cpu to stock and start over. You take and write down the voltage that is the starting voltage that it takes to run the cpu at stock and up the multiplier a notch and when you do that look in the bios at what the voltage is now and write that down next to the starting voltage. Then go into Windows and erify stability. The first set of changes will be easy becaue you have already done some overclocking with it. Then go back to the bios and up to the next notch and check the voltage and write it down and go into Windows to verify stable. Continue this process untill you get past where you were before and by this time you will start to see what you have to add for voltage when you get to where you need to do that because you will have seen each time you upped the multiplier what the auto setting added for voltage to keep it running.
At a point in this process you will have to manually start to add voltage to make the overclock stable and you will have to start stress testing Windows to verify that Windows can handle the load. You can use the previous attempt as a reference point as to when to start stress testing for a good amount of time. As you saw before when you had the cpu at 20.5 x and 1.375v when you went to play your game it froze , your game was a sort of stress test and Windows froze so that's when you would have added voltage and tried to play the game again and if it froze again then you would have added some more untill it didn't freeze. The adding of voltage is done in the smallest increments because the objective is to add the least amount as possable to make Windows stable.
A good stress testing software is Prime 95 , Futuremark also is good as they have 3D mark and Pc mark to use for testing.Keep a log as you go for reference and you will need a lot of patience and time.
Temps are anther thing to monitor as there are two things that are the enemy of the cpu , voltage and temps. Too much of either is not good but you do have some so you have to keep them to the minimum.try to keep the temps down to the 80's or below under stress testing , remember that stress testing with a software program that gives the cpu 100% load will give you the highest temps that you can get so if under 100% load your temps are 83c for example then that's the highest that you will see since there are not any games or programs that will give you 100% load , some will come close but not get there. So again keep your log going with the temps also so you have a record of what you can expect if you have a heavy program.
Overclocking is very tedious and slow process but you only have to go through it once and the result is worth the time and effort when you get a high stable overclock. Don't forget to save your overclock as a profile so you have it.

Thanks alot for all that info. Im gonna begin the process shortly. But i have acouple small questions still. What is the auto setting for the voltage? It adjusts the voltage itself as i add multipliers? also which voltages am i adjusting? i noticed alot of different ones. The one i was messing with was the main one. In the bios its default is 1.350v and it lets me increase by .025 increments. Is that small enough?

The auto setting will only work for a few increases of the multiplier and then it will stop increasing the voltage. Th main voltage is the one you increase and yes the .25 is what you want to increase at a time and some times you may need to do it twice , it will depend on stability.