We decided to have some fun with these two new Pentium 4 chips and were actually amazed at what they had in store for us in the magical land of overclocking.

Overclocking OC'ing The P4 660 and P4 EE 3.73GHz To The Max

P4 660 (3.6GHz) - 4.25GHz Stock Air-Cooled HSF

237MHz FSB - 626MHz DDR

P4 3.73GHz Extreme Edition - 4.20GHz Stock Air-Cooled HSF

300MHz FSB - 600MHz DDR

At first it was hard to believe these two processors were relatively stable at these clock speeds, but indeed they were. We ran our Folding client again at 100% load, and the system held up for about half an hour of testing on our open-air bench test setup. Frankly we wouldn't dare run at these speeds inside a closed chassis because core temps were reaching a scorching 80oC.  However, with a bit more elaborate cooling solution, especially watercooling or even a Vapochill, these processors should be able to hit these clocks speeds, and dare we say higher, without too much trouble. In our mind, a reasonable overclock expectation in a closed chassis with air cooling would be around the 4GHz mark. Either way, these new Prescott 2M core CPUs have a ton of headroom for overclocking enthusiasts.