New system builder Need help (M.2 nvme installation + overclocking)

[QUICKSORT]

Hi everyone,
I will be building my very first system. Even though it's my first time, I'm not new to pc's. I'm a software engineer that has used nothing but laptops so far.
But I wanted to make sure that I do everything correctly, hence the reason I'm here asking questions.

1. My initial and most important question is, about installing windows 10 on Samsung 960 pro.
I ordered a Maximus VIII Hero Alpha Motherboard.

I read about all these things about CSM and Secure Boot for just installing windows 10 on it. But couldn't find a proper explanation why people do these steps. And most tutorials being 1 year old I'm asking here, what needs to be done to utulize the 960 pro to it's upmost potential as a windows 10 boot drive? Mainly asking about any mother board configurations. Also if anything needs to be done/installed after installation, as I will be going to the samsung driver page and install what will be necessary, but Asking just to make sure.  And also if possible an explanation next to the steps, so that I can learn what I'm doing would be VERY helpful.

2. My 2nd question is about overclocking the CPU, So far all I did in terms of overclocking CPU on a laptop was raising the Turbo boost power time limit + raising the turbo boost frequencies.
So as I saw from many older videos on the internet, the main step is of course raising your multipliers, but what about the rest? If I overclock the CPU, do I HAVE to overclock ram too? What about other factors such as Cache? And most importantly, how do I play with voltages? Do I have to tinker with voltages? if so which ones? and how much? I'd rather have a nice stable overclock, not looking to push the limits of the CPU.
FYI, CPU I ordered: i7 6700K, Ram: 32GB Corsair vengence DDR 3000mhz, and CPU cooler: Corsair H115i 280mm radiator.

3. Do I need to update motherboard firmware? If so can it simply be done within windows? Or are installing drivers of the motherboard enough?

So yeah, if you can add anything else I should be aware of when building a new pc, please let me know.

And for the curious people. The system I ordered, which arrives tomorrow, hopefully.

Inwin 805 infinity Case
Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha motherboard
Intel i7 6700K CPU
32GB Corsair vengence DDR4 3000Mhz RAM
Corsair H115i CPU cooler
Asus Strix Geforce GTX 1080
Corsair ax860i psu (left plenty room for perhaps a future gpu upgrade)
6TB WD Red HDD
1TB Samsung 960 Pro nvme SSD

Asus pg27aq 4K IPS g-sync monitor
Corsair K70 rgb Rapidfire keyboard
Logitech G502 mouse

[Sniperfox47]

Sorry, but I'm not going to answer 2 because it's fairly intricate and I don't want to give wrong advice. If you touch overvoltaging be careful with it, Most CPUs have pretty good headroom without pushing voltages far if at all.

 

1 hour ago, QUICKSORT said:

1. My initial and most important question is, about installing windows 10 on Samsung 960 pro.
I ordered a Maximus VIII Hero Alpha Motherboard.

I read about all these things about CSM and Secure Boot for just installing windows 10 on it. But couldn't find a proper explanation why people do these steps. And most tutorials being 1 year old I'm asking here, what needs to be done to utulize the 960 pro to it's upmost potential as a windows 10 boot drive? Mainly asking about any mother board configurations. Also if anything needs to be done/installed after installation, as I will be going to the samsung driver page and install what will be necessary, but Asking just to make sure.  And also if possible an explanation next to the steps, so that I can learn what I'm doing would be VERY helpful.

Your motherboard should have CSM off for NVMe, Secure boot doesn't matter from a performance perspective but turning it on can help system security, and make sure UEFI mode is turned on, since BIOS/AHCI mode doesn't support NVMe.

 

If you're clean installing windows 10 you can just do it and it'll work since it has built in drivers for NVMe. If you do Windows 7 or 8 you can get it to work but it's a bit of a pain in the ass. I don't have a tutorial to link, but I'm sure someone else can mention one.

 

Once it's set up make sure you install Samsung's NVMe drivers for your drive. It's not necessary but they have some optimizations that improve performance over the built in Windows drivers.

 

1 hour ago, QUICKSORT said:

3. Do I need to update motherboard firmware? If so can it simply be done within windows? Or are installing drivers of the motherboard enough?

If you want to use a Kaby Lake processor you'll have to. If you encounter any issues with your NVMe drive you may want to since there are some PCIe fixes. Otherwise it shouldn't be necessary. If you update your UEFI firmware be really careful. Make sure you're on a battery backup because if power is lost during the flash it can brick your motherboard.

[QUICKSORT]

13 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Sorry, but I'm not going to answer 2 because it's fairly intricate and I don't want to give wrong advice. If you touch overvoltaging be careful with it, Most CPUs have pretty good headroom without pushing voltages far if at all.

 

Your motherboard should have CSM off for NVMe, Secure boot doesn't matter from a performance perspective but turning it on can help system security, and make sure UEFI mode is turned on, since BIOS/AHCI mode doesn't support NVMe.

 

If you're clean installing windows 10 you can just do it and it'll work since it has built in drivers for NVMe. If you do Windows 7 or 8 you can get it to work but it's a bit of a pain in the ass. I don't have a tutorial to link, but I'm sure someone else can mention one.

 

Once it's set up make sure you install Samsung's NVMe drivers for your drive. It's not necessary but they have some optimizations that improve performance over the built in Windows drivers.

 

If you want to use a Kaby Lake processor you'll have to. If you encounter any issues with your NVMe drive you may want to since there are some PCIe fixes. Otherwise it shouldn't be necessary. If you update your UEFI firmware be really careful. Make sure you're on a battery backup because if power is lost during the flash it can brick your motherboard.

Thank you very much, also do you know why CSM should be disabled for NVMe?

[Sniperfox47]

26 minutes ago, QUICKSORT said:

Thank you very much, also do you know why CSM should be disabled for NVMe?

As far as I know it has to do with the way the UEFI has to query the PCIe lanes in order to provide them properly to the emulated BIOS that the CSM makes, but don't quote me on that. NVMe is a bit of a weird thing to start with, and BIOS had very specific rules regarding storage that made them a bad fit. Some newer firmwares may offer better support with the CSM turned on, you can always play with it, but if you're having any issues the first troubleshooting step would be to disable it.

[QUICKSORT]

On 11/29/2016 at 2:04 PM, Sniperfox47 said:

As far as I know it has to do with the way the UEFI has to query the PCIe lanes in order to provide them properly to the emulated BIOS that the CSM makes, but don't quote me on that. NVMe is a bit of a weird thing to start with, and BIOS had very specific rules regarding storage that made them a bad fit. Some newer firmwares may offer better support with the CSM turned on, you can always play with it, but if you're having any issues the first troubleshooting step would be to disable it.

Thank you very much once again.
Hope things work out well. Every piece of hardware arrived. Going to build it this week-end.