Intel E2140 CPU + Asus P5B-VM motherboard: good combo for price?

[Thorin]

I've been looking at an inexpensive replacement for my dead computer and I've been reading, reading, reading.  There's been quite a few good things said about Intel's bargain-basement chips, the E21XX series.  Apparently they respond very well to overclocking.

Now, I'm not a huge OC nut, but if you can get 50% higher CPU speeds out of a chip by simply increasing the Front Side Bus speed in the BIOS, without requiring any voltage increases or even adding in any non-stock cooling options, why wouldn't you?  There are quite a few examples of people overclocking the E2140 and E2160 100% or more while staying stable.  And some of them even hit 100% with the stock CPU heatsink.

Given that the E2140 chip is cheap at MemEx ($70), and the ASUS P5B-VM motherboard is cheap ($110), can you see anything wrong with putting these two together and simply bumping up the FSB from 200MHz to 300MHz?  This would make the E2140 switch from 1.6GHz to 2.4GHz, plenty fast for anything I might do with it.  Would you settle for the P5B-VM motherboard?  Are there any features you'd want that come on the other Asus P5B boards?  Here's a comparo of the features of each board: http://event.asus.com/2006/mb/P5B/models.html, and the P5B-VM writeup: http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1312&l1=3&l2=11&l3=332&l4=0

Downsides to the E2140, according to the various review sites, is that there is less L2 cache (1MB shared between the cores) and that the lower L2 cache results in worse performance when running some games.  I'm willing to bet it runs faster than my single-core 1.3GHz Pentium 4 sitting at home in my old Dell, though

[Lazybones]

Just to note: I don't like over clocking as no matter how much word of mouth I don't consider it stable.

If you bump when you bump up the Buss speed it often puts strain on your RAM and PCI devices unless the board has separate multipliers for them.

[Melbosa]

I agree about Over Clocking.  Only for the Enthusiasts or the Very Technically Inclined.  I would never recommend it to someone who isn't working in the hardware/keeping up with that part of the industry.  Too much to know, too much at stake (over clocking does usually void the warranty).

[Thorin]

Yeah, I was looking at the P5B-VM because the whole P5B family has separate controls for the PCI bus speed.  Can you explain why increasing the bus speed puts a strain on the RAM?  Does having higher-rated RAM offset that (for instance, PC-6400 instead of PC-4200)?  As far as I understand it, changing the FSB just changes how quickly the CPU can send instructions out...

[Lazybones]

Yes, using higher rated RAM should solve the problem, unless you have pushed the buss up higher than the fastest RAM available. Ram can over heat if pushed too far, that is why the enthusiast ram now comes with heat sinks

[Melbosa]

Let see, I've been building hi-end computers for since 1998, usually on average once every 1.5 years for myself, never mind clients/friends during that time.  I have had a need to overclock I think twice (just didn't have the $$$ to get a new machine).  Have I ever done it right off the shelf?  Not once, the machines I did do it too were already 1+ years old, which means some of the parts were already off warranty. 

Outside of that I've never seen the cost benefit of overclocking off the shelf.  Risk versus rewards really doesn't do it for me.  IMO, I'd spend the extra $80 for an equivalent processor in speed, seeing as though you are going to buy the RAM at that FSB speed to compensate for your overclocking, and get the warranty with it.