@OP: The question to ask yourself is what you hope to achieve by overclocking your system. Are your programs / games running sluggishly? Is it something that can be fixed by upgrading to a SSD or by putting faster or more RAM in your system? And yes. You can burn out a CPU by repeatedly stressing it thermally. Also, you can do other kinds of damage by playing with the Vcore. if the local bus speed changes, you may experience RAM issues. (As both The_Dev and Hadron_Curious said) Not all BIOSes have built in safeguards (O/C protection.) Check your BIOS and make sure that you have minimum protection, or at least an understanding of what overclocking will do to your system. The stock Intel coolers are not adequate for overclocking (as Joe_C said) Replace the Heatsink compound with Arctic Silver before even considering O/C ing. And beef up your case, adding extra fans where necessary. Also, make sure that your power supply is up to par. Overclocking will increase current consumption, possibly stressing your power supply. Overclocking is not for the faint of heart. Be careful.