When I put Kobalt together, I did so with the express intention of overclocking. I knew nothing about it. I had no experience in it. I just knew I wanted to do it.
I bought a 6600K and a all-in-one Corsair H80i GT Hydro Series CPU cooler, and then studied all I could about it. And I guess this shows obvious lack of forethought on my end because Kobalt was supposed to end up in a Cougar QBX, a teeny tiny pouch of a case. Eventually, he got bumped up to a Corsair Carbide Spec M2, so there's a little more breathing room, which helps with cooling.
After a few days of fiddling with my rig, hoping not to burn my house down, I was able to find and settle for a stable overclock.
This is how I did it:
In a nutshell, I entered BIOS, changed the multiplier, changed the voltage, tested for stability, changed the multiplier and voltage values again until I found a stable overclock. The Gigabyte Z170 Gaming 5 motherboard made that part easy.
And this is how it's doing:
I settled for 4.2Ghz at 1.235v. Considering the factory clock was at 3.5Ghz, I think I'm happy with what I'm getting. Yes, I know it can go higher, but it's doing okay and I don't wanna stress the machine too much. All in all, overclocking your CPU won't help with your gaming performance that much. The CPU hasn't been a gaming bottleneck for years. It will help with rendering and things like, so if that's something you do, then overclocking might be for you assuming you have the proper hardware and the patience to keep testing.