Thank you pollushon and coathi. I appreciate both of your inputs.

The reason that I asked the question in these forums was because everyone I have talked to has basically told me somthing similiar to what coathi stated; "Don't overclock b/c it will shorten the life of the cpu." When I asked these people (all friends who have have some overclocking experience) "As long as I have a acruate way of measuring the cpu's temp. and it stays within an acceptable range, everything should be ok, right? They just respond with "don't do it!"

If I were to overclock the chip, I wouldn't do it to the extreme that the review did, probably just a 10-15% increase. But I would only do this if I could keep an eye on the cpu temp. Only problem is I have no idea how to do this. I'm not really sure the meat thermometer on newegg is appropiate and even if it is, how do I get an accurate reading? Can I get the cpu's temp off of the heatsink by attaching the probe with thermal compound? or is that not a reliable reading b/c the cpu will be significantly hotter.

thanks again in advance