Question Should I upgrade, if so what parts? Or Overclock

[will125]

So I am an engineering student and don't do a lot of gaming on my pc anymore, mainly run modelling software and other engineering applications that can be somewhat demanding of the computer (especially rendering images/videos and running certain codes). I am wondering if you guys would recommend I
a) Overclock my CPU. I am not very knowledgable around this and am wondering if it can potentially be damaging to my system. So I am interested in any advise or potential risks regarding this aspect.
or
b) Upgrade certain components. What components would you recommend upgrading? Can I upgrade only my CPU and maybe GPU or would I need to also upgrade the motherboard? I am certainly no expert on compatibility of components.

My current specs are:
-i5-6600k (CAM Monitor tells me it is running up to 3.9 GHz)
-Radeon (TM) RX 480 GPU
-MSI Z170A PC Mate (MS-7971)
-8 Gb of ADATA XPG (2x4GB) 3000 MHz and 16 Gb of Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3200MHz C16 which I could only get to run together at 2666 MHz due to different timings.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[tennis2]

Do you have a solid state drive or a mechanical hard drive.

What sort of engineer are you that you're rendering images/video?

Have tried setting RAM speeds manually? I bet you can hit 3000MHz on both kits, possibly without even sacrificing any sub-timings.

TBH, your system is perfectly fine for what you need. You can look into overclocking your CPU while maintaining stock voltage. That's not harmful at all. 4.5GHz all-core (just set multiplier to 45x in your BIOS) at 1.2V should be achievable (might have to set a negative voltage offset to bring voltage down to that number)

 

[will125]

I have a SSD that I run my OS and main programs off and a 7200 rpm 2 TB HDD for games and larger programs.

I am in mechanical engineering so mainly part/assembly images which don't take long using Photoview 360 or Visualizer in Solidworks, but exploding/collapsing videos of assemblies can take upwards of an hour to fully render a 15 second video at like 10 fps. When I use photoview 360 though it appears to only use CPU resources and no GPU for the rendering. Do you think it would be quicker if I could get it to use both/only GPU? Also running FEA and CFD simulations can be fairly strenuous on the CPU.

I was messing around in the BIOS right when I got the additional ram but would get errors and it would not run over that speed, however, I didn't really know what I was doing so I was probably just doing something wrong If you have any insight or resources where I could learn how to do this it would be appreciated!

Is it hard to figure out how to OC it through youtube videos? Or pretty intuitive? Will I still get a few years out of the computer if I go up to 4.5 GHz or would that kill it pretty quickly? I have 3002 hours currently on the computer.

Thank you very much for the reply