First real try at Overclocking

By some circumstance which I am lazy to tell a grandmother story about, I was able to get a new motherboard and cpu (and ram).

The Zerotherm heatsink, Core2Duo E7200, MSI P35 Neo2 FR, and two 2GB Kingston DDR2 800Mhz (yes, I typed this line from memory.. if you think i’m geek then D:< *angry face for you*)

Uncovered.

CPU Heatsink misc stuff

Intel chip taken out of box! It’s so small.. most of the box is just the stock heatsink >_>

Size comparison.. I hope my case is big enough!

Closer look

Insert.

Bottom-up view of the fan underneath the heatsink..
Had to cut the bottom left corner of the fan because it blocked a motherboard power port.. ._.

Damn, it’s bigger than my case!

I cut my hand a little during the whole process of switching the mobo out. The heatsink was so big I couldn’t slide the motherboard tray back in, I had to screw it in from the side cover.. wonder if anyone understands what I’m saying now.. lol.

Have to remove the plastic cone on the side cover (and later, the metal grill too.. for now I just taped a piece of paper over the hole. lol

The whole process took me from around 7pm to 11pm for fixing + install vista again cus it doesn’t start due to new motherboard.. stupid microsoft =/ 11pm+ to 5am, installing stuff, and trying to overclock.

Oh, I overclocked the 2.5Ghz chip to 3.8Ghz, couldn’t go higher because I got only 800mhz kingston value rams.. and not performance ones. But 3.8GHz is gonna last me a few years. Framerates in games don’t drop much if at all when things get packed, even on max settings. 8800GT really shines now!

So overall, I had to modify the fan, case, and bios settings! But it was worth the time spent!

Update:
This morning I removed one 80GB hard drive, reduced the cable mess and put an extra case fan in the drive bay to increase airflow. Covered side hole with transparency too =D