How to use vm.overcommit_memory=1 without getting system hung?

I am using

.overcommit_memory=1

on my linux system which has been helpful to allow starting multiple applications which otherwise wouldn't even start with default value of 0, however, sometimes my system just freezes and seems the OOM killer is unable to do anything to prevent this situation. I have some swap memory which also got consumed. I've also noticed some instances when system is unresponsive, even the magic SysRq keys don't work. Sorry, no logs are available at this time to include here. In general, is there any configuration or tunable that can get the OOM killer to kill the highest memory consuming process(es) immediately without ever letting the system go unresponsive when using

.overcommit_memory=1

?