OC'ing help, please...?

[hifiaudio2]

I just put together a new rig and its the first one I have built myself in about 4 years, so much has changed by way of options in the bios, etc.

I have read the guides online, but it seems somewhat dated, so I hope I can get some advice from the experts.

Here is what I am running:

Intel e6300
Corsair Dominator 8500c5d with the memory fan
Tuniq Tower
Antec 900 case with huge fans
EVGA 680i motherboard

I just put it together last night and did a quick preliminary overclock. The CPU is at 3.15 and the memory is "unlinked" and running at 1067 while the FSB is at 1800.

I tried going higher with the fsb but am starting to get video corruption, hanging, etc. I have seen people getting this high of an overclock on this processor with stock Intel cooling, so I dont want to be wasting money on the expensive ram and heatsink if this is all I can get. I also upped the cpu, fsb, and memory voltage by one tenth of a volt (as Maximumpc indicated that they did in their recent system build) but that didnt seem to help, so I took it back down.

Also, the memory timings are on auto and are at 5-5-5-18 - As I recall, im not at that computer right now. I had thought that SLI memory was supposed to automatically set itself to more aggressive timings.

So my question is this - What should I be expecting out of this system? I have cooling all over the place, so I wouldnt think that to be an issue.

What would be a good starting point on all of the settings, and then which ones should I be slowly increasing until I get a hang or something?

One last question - This was the first time I installed a heatsink and applied my own thermal grease - and I am wondering if I did that correctly. I did put it all over the processor, but a VERY thin layer - once I was done the layer was similar to a piece of tape residue once tape has been pulled off something it was on for a long time. Does that sound correct?