OC advice

[Hylian]

I currently have a AMD 3500+ cpu that runs at 2.2GHz. My motherboard, Asus AV8, has a AI Overclocking, and gives me the option to overclock it automatically upto 10%, 2.42GHz.

I've tried this, and the system runs perfectly smooth, and with a great deal of difference in Windows/Game loading times, and performance in everything else as well.

My conern though is, without Overclocking, my cpu temps are ~38 C, yet they jump to 50 C when I do overclock (within a few minutes of gaming).

I only have CPU stock cooling, and I have 4 case fans (2 intake - one front, one side, 2 outtakes - both rear).

Think I should OC, or are there a few things I should be careful of?

 

[PC eye]

I see about 42-44C when OCing the 3500+ on the Asus A8N-SLI model board here. That's after installing a Zalman cpu cooler that generally sees well under 40C when idle and about 41-42C when running WMP or other media loading it up. Running pc games with high details enabled sees about 37-38C.

OCing is always going to bring up cpu temps since hardware like cpus are being stressed. At times that can shorten the life of an individual component. Most OCers look into a large variety of cooling measures like 3rd party cpu coolers to keep temps down as low as possible. That's done to protect from damages seen when something overheats.