I've been overclocking for years, never really hardcore like some. My main interest has always been getting the most out of a rig for DC projects, with an eye for cost effective components. Since my blades that crunch 24/7 need to last as long as a stock unit, you'll rarely find me pushing a blade with much more than a little bump in vcore (with today's cpu's, anyway).

Cpu's, I've been running 930's, but those have been shelved for Conroes. Still trying some combos out, early adopting sure has bitten me here. I'm still waiting for decent bios updates for the Abit, and am firing up a Gigabyte DS3 right now with an e6400.

Memory, I tend to buy cost effective modules that can scale pretty high considering their price point. What I like right now are Ballistix DDR2 667, that are binned for 3,3,3,12 timings. Ceiling has been around the 400mhz and up with a bit looser timings. Very good performance for 2X512 at $110 a pair.

I guess I miss out on some big benchies, since I really can't justify paying premium prices for an upscale cpu, or some really good memory. I find I need to stretch the outlay across the fleet to maximize crunching potential. Now if I could find some free electricity, I'd be one happy camper....

So there's my philosophy, anyone with large farms do anything different?

Paul

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I overclock to get better value out of the processors I buy.  All of my machines are not dedicated crunchers, they all have a business or personal use first, crunching is a side benefit .  As a consequence, I need reliability, so I don't push my machines as hard as I otherwise might.

Jack, overclocking isn't hard today if you're not going for extremes.  With quality intel chipset boards and processors (could be with AMD and others too, but it's been too long since I've had experience with them), it's very hard to damage anything short of a major mistake (like setting vcore to 2v   ).  The worst that happens is that the system won't boot, hangs, or continually reboots.  On rare occasion, this can corrupt your hard drive, which a quick repair install fixes nicely.  You just need to excersize caution in adjusting the various voltages, if necessary.  Moving them up in small increments is the way to go there.  And keeping temps low helps alot and will lead to longer processor life.

Bottom line, don't skimp on the power supply or cooling.

Most of the recent intel processors I've had direct experience with get a minimum of 30% FSB overclock, with some getting over 50%.  All are running completely stable