The Ultimate Overclocking Guide

I know most of you are probably familiar with this stuff, but for anyone new to this stuff  here's a guide I wrote.

Overclocking GPUs, CPUs, and Monitors.

I am not responsible for fried parts, PC failure, your divorce, or electrocution. By following this guide you are doing everything under your own consent and fault.

What is overclocking?
Overclocking is forcing a computer component to  run faster and better than the manufacturer intended it to run. This comes with the benefit of a free performance boost, but in some cases overclocking can cause overheating or things like blue screens etc. But if you follow my guide, the chances of ruining anything are very slim.

Order of Guides:
1. GPUs
2. CPUs
3. Monitors
Let's get to it.

Graphics Card Overclocking
For some people overclocking the GPU can get them a 20% performance boost
Risks:
Overheating and too much voltage. But, the way I do it is 99% safe, because I do not apply any extra voltage :).
Steps:
1. Download and install MSI Afterburner (goo.gl/VB0QMC) and Heaven Benchmark (goo.gl/bEJsp9)
2. (Optional) To really know what kind of performance you're going to gain from the overclock, open up Heaven benchmark, click run, and click benchmark in the top left. Let it run through, and when it's done write down the average frame rate somewhere.
3. Open MSI Afterburner. The only things we are going to be changing are the core clock, memory clock, and fan speed.
4. Put Heaven benchmark into windowed mode and put it next to MSI afterburner, as big as it can fit on your monitor without covering up afterburner, and just let it run in the background. No need to click benchmark.
5. Click "Auto" on the fan speed section in afterburner to go into manual mode and drag it to 100%. Then start increasing the core clock count in increments of 20MHz. Each time you increase, hit apply and wait around 30 seconds to see if it is stable. If you start to see weird things happen on heaven benchmark, turn it back down 50 or so MHz.
6. When you crash, and YOU WILL CRASH IT'S OKAY, you will most likely have to restart your computer. It is perfectly fine and normal. Go back and do steps 3 & 4, then come back and do step 7.
7. Turn the core clock to around 20MHz less than what it was when you crashed, or really whatever you feel comfortable with. Wait one minute with heaven running and look to the graph portion of afterburner. Watch the "GPU1 temperature" graph and make sure that it does not go above 75C (or what you feel comfortable with but 75C is safe). If it does simply turn down your overclock until it gets to a safe temperature.
8. Run Heaven Benchmark in fullscreen for 15 minutes, and if it runs into any issues go to step 7.
9. Now we are essentially going to do the same exact thing but with the memory clock. Go back to step 4, and follow through to this step except you can usually change the memory clock in increments of 50 instead of 20.
10. Now go back to Heaven benchmark, and click benchmark and run it in fullscreen again. Compare what your average is now vs. before. Post your results below! I'd love to see what kind of gains you got from it.
11. Save your overclock to a profile at the bottom of afterburner and you're all set!
You can of course increase the voltage if you want to push your card even more, but at that point it becomes unsafe. I have actually blown the power connectors on an R9 290 as a result of too much voltage before.

Processor Overclocking
CPU overclocking is pretty much 100% safe as long as you don't apply extra voltage and you have adequate cooling. Anytime you push it too hard on clock speeds, it will just refuse to boot the system and you can easily change it back. Also, CPU overclocking requires motherboard support and is different on every motherboard. Another big thing is that your CPU must have an unlocked multiplier. Pretty much all AMD CPUs are unlocked, but in the case of Intel the chip must have a K at the end (for example the I5-6600k) with the exception of the Pentium G3258.
Steps:
1. Pull this article up on another device. You are going to be going into your BIOS for this.
2. Download & install Prime95 (goo.gl/QWE2ti) and Open Hardware Monitor (goo.gl/3Rla2s) We'll come back to this later.
3. Reboot your PC and while it's turning on spam F12, or whatever button the splash screen says to press to get into the BIOS (it varies on some motherboards), until it brings up the BIOS screen. If it brings up a boot device screen press "Enter BIOS".
4. This will vary a lot from mobo to mobo. You are looking for clock settings, overclocking settings, or it might even be in an "advanced" tab. You want an option that will let you change the clock speed or multiplier, it might even be called the CPU Ratio. If your CPU is running at 3.2 GHz the multiplier will be at 32, 3.6GHz would be 36 and so on.
5. Increase your multiplier by 5. Don't touch the voltage, this will keep you 99% safe. Reboot your PC and run Prime95 and Open Hardware Monitor. Start it up and let it run for 5-10 minutes. While doing so, make sure that you are watching Open Hardware Monitor for your CPU temperatures. If it happens to go above 75C anytime during this guide, I would suggest turning down your overclock because if you're running above that temperature for extended periods of time, it can reduce your CPU lifespan... If you're stable, awesome! Reboot back into your BIOS (step 4) While
6. Keep increasing your multiplier in increments of 2 and repeat step 5 until you hit the wall and crash. When that happens just reboot back into your BIOS and turn down your multiplier. Run Prime95, watch your temperatures in Open Hardware Monitor and if everything seems good you're done!

Monitor Overclocking
Monitor overclocking allows you to see more FPS if your hardware can run a game at that FPS by increasing the refresh rate of your monitor. If you don't know what these things are, watch this video (goo.gl/AHRrK1) Overclocking your monitor is very safe and most generic monitors are able to hit 75Hz.
Steps:
1. Download and install CRU (goo.gl/FHT5KW)
2. Open it, and select which monitor you want to overclock if you have multiple. If you just have one, you're all set to start overclocking.
3. Click "Add" towards the middle of the screen. At the bottom there will be the option to change the refresh rate. You can start by increasing it by 10. Click "OK", and click "OK" again to save. Open the folder you extracted CRU into and click restart. This will restart your monitors.
4. If your monitor is fine, running well, open up CRU again click on the profile you just created and click "edit". You can now start to increase the refresh rate in increments of 2 and just keep restarting your monitors with the CRU utility until your monitor won't work anymore. When that happens, press F8 to enter the CRU recovery mode and go back to your monitor profiles, and turn your overclock down and restart until you are stable again.
5. If you don't have any issues and your monitor is running smooth, you're golden!