Some advice.
1. Do not manually volt your ram on AM3. Especially with an Asus board, they don't like it. Both my CHVFZ and M5A97 R2.0 absolutely hate it when you touch ram voltage. Both are completely unstable and unable to even maintain stock clocks.
2. Be very careful about which cooler you decide to use. Remember; the rule here is that what usually works on Intel doesn't work the same way on AMD. There are certain coolers out there that are supposedly brilliant, yet, when put on an AM3 they just crumble. This is because the AM3 die is larger than the Intel and the cores are put into the far corners. That Zalman wouldn't be much use.
3. Whenever possible, go water. That means H80-H100 if you can pick one up cheap, or, at the very worst a second hand H70. AM3 chips really need water if you want to chase big clocks. I suggest one of the three I listed if you want to chase 4.4ghz+. I am running a Scythe Ninja on my 4.4ghz 8320 (board VRM limited) and it just about holds the temps.
4. Ignore the max temps of the chip. Some people say 63c, others say 72c, I say - basically the chip will let you know itself when it is too hot (it'll simply lock up your PC). You can't possibly damage it because it has a heat throttle/shutdown. It's the same with Intel CPUs, GPUs, anything else. I was told never to go over 63c with my 8320, well I disagree, because I can hold a 5ghz overclock with a max package temp of 73c in Asus Realbench R2.0.
5. Try not to use synthetics to test an AMD. Whilst it may work well on Intel I can run Prime 95 for over an hour with no crashes on my 8320 @ 5.2ghz, yet, run Asus Realbench and as soon as I hit the multi tasking test I bomb. Realbench is great because it uses actual real life applications with which to stress your PC (Handbrake, GIMP, hi res video, etc).
I would aim for 4.4ghz. Anything over that does provide yields, but they get lower and lower as the chip begins to near 5ghz. In the end I decided on an all round clock of 4.9ghz, which hits 71c in Prime 95 and LinX* and remains stable through the Asus Realbench multi tasking tests
* I really don't advise using Prime, but, if used in moderation (IE five minute bursts) it's a good indicator of what sort of temps your CPU will allow you to hit. That's all I use it for though, as like I said it does not simulate real world conditions like Asus Realbench does
Good luck !
