For some athlon chipsets (via's and sis' mostly), you have to becareful about the pci bus frequency. Since they don't have locked pci bus, when you're overclocking the cpu, you're overclocking the pci bus as well. An overlocked pci bus (higher than 33mhz) can potentially damage hard drives or cards in your pc. The pci bus is 33mhz when fsb is 100/133/166/200, so try to stay close to these settings.
To overclock without serious damage to your hardware, make sure the cooling is done properly. I would try to keep the cpu below 55C under full load. Do some research before you overclock, you'll save yourself lots of trouble in the long run. Personally, I would just buy a faster chip since they're cheaper than proper heatsink/fans. Just got a new applebred duron 1.4ghz for cdn$50 few weeks ago. You can get a 1.6 or 1.8 for slightly more than that. I got it to replace my 1800+ so that I can keep the chip at 42-43C while running cpu fan at 2000rpm.
One final tip, if you're having problem booting up after overclocking, clear the CMOS (there should be a jumper beside the battery, read the manual for detail) to get back to default speed.
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