Overclock Warehouse provides a unique service to the casual overclocker, or to the person in the know, who wants a simpler process, a guarantee, and is willing to pay for someone else's "legwork". They sell pre-tested bundles, guaranteed to function at a higher clockrate. We've tested a few of their gems in the past here, and they haven't missed target yet.

Today we look at their Celeron2 600 bundle with an OEM CC0 stepping Celeron2-600, and a Global Win FOP38 guaranteed to overclock to 1008mhz (112 FSBx9.5) on a 1.85v core.

The Global Win FOP38 heatsink is a big part of making it to that high a clock speed. Essentially the FOP32, but with a higher output 7200 rpm 60mm fan pushing 38CFM or air! Not the quietest fan in the world, but inside a case already jammed with five 80mm fans, it's unnoticeable here. :)

To take advantage of such an overclocked bundle, even with a guarantee, you still have to have a decent board to put it in, and memory that can handle whatever the FSB speed needs to be. In the case of Celeron2's in particular, with their high multiplier-to-FSB ratio, obtaining a higher core speed can be accomplished with a much lower FSB than a P3 overclock. You lose some performance in comparison of course, but then again, taking a P3-700 to 143FSB to get at 1Ghz takes more of a mainboard, and more out of your memory, than in our case taking a Celeron2-600 to 1Ghz which can be done at 112Mhz FSB. In all likelihood, your ol' BX board, and cheapo stick of PC-100 will make it just fine, thereby saving extra cash.

My personal testbed mainboard, and currently my favorite board, is the Asus CUSL2. Already a known stable overclocker, running at this moment @ 143FSB with a stick of PC150 SDRAM, I expect pushing the Celeron2 to 1Ghz to be a walk in the park, and I wasn't disappointed.

I followed the Overclock Warehouse recommendations, installed the processor/heatsink and run it at 600 first, mainly just to verify that I'm not an idiot. :) All it took was a warm reboot, a quick peek in the BIOS to change FSB to 112Mhz, and core to 1.85V and I was once again greeted with a stable and fast Windows desktop. I've said it before about their guaranteed bundles, but it's true, it just doesn't get any simpler than this!

Next page: How fast is it?

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