[Joe Forster/STA]

Even in the 486DX times, all kinds of CPU's were manufactured and the not-so-reliable ones were restamped to and sold at a lower clock speed or with some other restriction (in the particular case of the 486DX, the FPU was disabled). The stress is on not being reliable at the higher clock speed!

If you have a PC hardware shop - or know someone there - and you can pick out and test several CPU's (of the same nominal rating and, therefore, price) then, yes, overclocking may work. But, even then, you have to be careful about setting the FSB, PCI clock, voltages in the BIOS correctly and getting a powerful, good brand PSU and cooling system.

What does this boil down to? That newbies shouldn't overclock their stuff with some freely available software because it simply won't work. Not only it will burn out soon - perhaps, sooner than just half a year! - but it will work unreliably even during that short period of time. I don't think there's anything false in that statement...