If you want the thrill of overclocking, you can start right now. If
the degree of overclock is small enough, you don't have to know anything
to do it.
Download this software. It allows overclocking. You run this in
Windows, rather than attempting to overclock from the BIOS. Install
it and run it. Your E380 and its 6100 Northbridge are in the supported
hardware
list ("Geforce 6100/6150"). I have to point you to an archived copy
of the program, because the author no longer supports it (likely got tired
of
people asking for support for their motherboard).
http://web.archive.org/web/20070929075711/http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php
Move the FSB slider by 1MHz. Now you're overclocking. You can review
and verify the results in real time, with this. I don't have to use an
archived copy of this program, because the developer still supports
it. By only overclocking by 1MHz, none of the hardware will be stressed,
so there should be no damage or side effects from your experiment.
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
Now, compare your results, to this guy. He is running a Celeron
processor at 8.2GHz. The CPU is cooled to -186C with liquid nitrogen. The
CPU
has had the metal lid removed, so the cooling system can be in intimate
contact with the silicon die. This is what real overclockers do for
fun. This web site probably has somewhere around 1 million reports of
various
kinds, involving computers running at abnormal speeds.
http://hwbot.org/community/submission/949325_tin_cpu_z_celeron_lga775_347_8199.5_mhz
For discussions about all aspects of this sport, I recommend the
forums here. Some of the forums have "sticky" threads, containing a
primer on the topic. For example, the water cooling forum has an
article, describing some of the basics of water cooling for
computers. Anyone with money for this kind of stuff (like spending
$5000 for a custom freon-based cooling system), is likely to show up
and post here.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/index.php
You can spend hours going through the forums there, and learn about
the latest hardware and how to overclock it. And you'll learn valuable
things, such as not running your 45nm Core2 processor at more than
1.4 volts on Vcore. Or not to boost the Vcore on your FX57, without
boosting the Vdimm at the same time, to prevent damage to the processor.
Other people will have
ruined hundreds of dollars worth of processors, to get some of those
data points, and make it possible for later overclcokers to do their thing
with
more safety.
And if you want to understand what mechanisms can damage the
processor, try an article like this. This is one way processors are
gradually ruined. When enthusiasts ruin processors in this way, such
that they won't overclock any more, the unscrupulous sell them on
Ebay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration
Have fun,
Paul