Question Overclocking i7-6700k

[yaboibaron]

Hello! im looking to overclock my i7-6700k, it currently sits at 4.0ghz and id like to push it up to 4.5-4.6. i watched a guide with my motherboard(asus z170-a) and they said to put the voltage at 1.345. I am very new to overclocking so i dont wanna do anything without confirmation from recent and not years old videos. SO a few questions i have is:

1. Is it worth to push it to what i desire? will i notice a decent sized performance increase?
2. My cpu cooler is a NZXT AIO water cooler. is that good enough?
3. I play MMO RPG's, so i know cpu is a big factor for those, will i notice a good increase in these?

And lastly, I do leave my pc on almost 24/7 because some games require "afk" play to keep progressing. Will this hurt my cpu while overclocked?
Again, thanks for answering these im sorry for all the questions but i want to be very cautious when it comes to touching my system . Thank you so much!

 

[Eximo]

1.345 is on the higher side of things, but still relatively safe. I wouldn't concern yourself with what others have for voltage beyond staying around 1.35 volts as a safe daily maximum. Every CPU will behave a little differently. You should overclock by small amounts to get comfortable with the process. But, with 4.5GHz as a target goal you can simply go for broke and try it out. Then try reducing the voltage until it crashes. Safer approach is to work towards it though.

You will have to monitor temperatures and see if it stays in an acceptable range. Not really something anyone can give a direct answer for with a vague cooler description, or even with a complete one. Ambient temperature, airflow in your case, etc are all unknowns.

Depends on what you are expecting to see in the MMO. If you are having FPS issues related to your CPU speed, then sure, but even at stock the i7-6700k is going to be in the top 10% of CPUs or so for gaming of any kind. An easy test is to reduce your graphics settings to see if you can get an FPS increase. If not, then your CPU is holding things back. If you do see an increase, it means you would immediately benefit from a faster GPU, or even overclocking it instead.

More voltage increases the wear and tear on the CPU, but as long as it stays cool it should still last longer than the useful lifetime of the computer.

 

[yaboibaron]

1.345 is on the higher side of things, but still relatively safe. I wouldn't concern yourself with what others have for voltage beyond staying around 1.35 volts as a safe daily maximum. Every CPU will behave a little differently. You should overclock by small amounts to get comfortable with the process. But, with 4.5GHz as a target goal you can simply go for broke and try it out. Then try reducing the voltage until it crashes. Safer approach is to work towards it though.

You will have to monitor temperatures and see if it stays in an acceptable range. Not really something anyone can give a direct answer for with a vague cooler description, or even with a complete one. Ambient temperature, airflow in your case, etc are all unknowns.

Depends on what you are expecting to see in the MMO. If you are having FPS issues related to your CPU speed, then sure, but even at stock the i7-6700k is going to be in the top 10% of CPUs or so for gaming of any kind. An easy test is to reduce your graphics settings to see if you can get an FPS increase. If not, then your CPU is holding things back. If you do see an increase, it means you would immediately benefit from a faster GPU, or even overclocking it instead.

More voltage increases the wear and tear on the CPU, but as long as it stays cool it should still last longer than the useful lifetime of the computer.

Thanks for the detailed and descriptive reply! i currently only have a gtx 1060, so im on a lower end of gpu compared to what we need to run big mmo's these days. i did go to the lowest settings and ik that uses more cpu, and it wasnt even over 30% cpu usage(not overclocked). so the answer is for me to get a gpu. Thanks so much for the help and sorry for the late reply!