To start, please do your homework.. You are solely responsible to SAFELY overclock your machine. I will give you a few basics.
*Not sure if you have upgraded your BIOS for full ivy bridge support on the Z68 platform, that would be the first step. This can turn your motherboard into a paperweight, so please flash it properly (I recommend you consult the Gigabyte website, and use a flash drive not the windows software).
*Download CPU-Z, Core Temp, and Prime 95
*Check your temperatures during idle with Core Temp. you should be 30-40 ish. If you are much higher than this, DO NOT overclock until you figure out why. Improper application of thermal paste or failure to mount heatsink properly would be prime candidates to "why" if your temperatures are higher than they should be.
*Figure out how to enable your advanced bios features. Typically you can do this with a F (function) key. Consult your mobo manual.
*I recommend for a first overclock to disable turbo/speedstep and all power saving options. There is another school of thought that involves uses speedstep and offset voltages. I am old school and will not recommend that path. You should also consider disabling hyperthreading depending on how high you want to clock. For a smaller clock, it should not be neccessary to disable.
*MAKE SURE you adjust all your voltages to the fixxed stock voltages. DO NOT leave voltages on "auto" for overclocking, or you run the risk of burning something up.
*MAKE SURE your ram is set to factory recommended voltages - No higher than 1.5V. If your RAM modules are running higher than 1.5V you may damage the sensitive memory controller on your CPU.
*Now if you get this far, and believe voltages are set properly, you should be able to safely overclock to 4.0 ghz on all cores by adjusting the CPU Multiplier ONLY. Boot into windows, fire up CPU-Z and Core Temp. Double Check Voltages and Temperatures.
*If temperatures and voltages are where they should be, start running a FFT test in Prime 95 and keep a close eye on your temperatures in Core Temp. The temperatures should not go over 70ish (ideally sitting in 50-60s).
That is a place to start. Note: Blue screens and reboots are common ground for finding a "stable" overclock. Don't be surprised, it shouldn't hurt your computer. If I was running your system I would probably put my voltage around 1.25 and put it to 4.5GHZ overclock as a starting point. If it boots into windows, check temps. If temps and voltages are stable, run Prime95. If it crashes, add voltage. If its stable and cool, increase clock. Rinse, wash, repeat.
There is not a single good reason in the world to not overclock that system to 4.4-4.7 GHZ . You paid big bucks for that cooler. Make that beast purr
*Edit considering your graphics card though I might say 4.2-4.4, you will be bottlenecked for games regardless. If you were to buy a high end graphics card in the future I would not hesitate to push for 4.6ish for a second.
Start slowly and safely. Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty straightforward. I have been running overclocked machines for over 10 years and have never burned up a system component to date. If you buy good quality hardware, its relatively safe. I aim for moderate overclocks though, not worth adding unreasonable voltage to get another 100-200 mhz. Just my opinion.
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