EA, he has a celeron (cheap). Besides that, he need not worry about smoking its life off because overclocking doesnt do it. All CPUs are essentially "overclocked". You think a P4 2Ghz is any different than a P4 1.8Ghz? It isnt. They are manufactured on the same process. The only difference is the 2Ghz CPUs came out of the fab able to run 2Ghz 100% of the time with the same cooling and voltage requirements, AND the company was ready to take the next speed to market. Once the company finds they are maxing out the current design (thus can not "overclock" any longer), they switch to smaller/cooler ones (ie: the .13 process Intel and AMD started using now). As long as you have the proper cooling taking place, your CPU will run fine at a higher clockspeed and last as long as it would at the normal speed. Far longer than anyone would really be using it anyway. Well, except for my PII300 thats been running at 450Mhz for 5 years. Dang thing is on it's third user. :) His problem is most likely 256MB RAM. I used to have the same problem when rendering high res pics of vic2 with high res texs and bumps + shadows. Many others had the same problems and posted them here when Vic2 was released.