1. When pushing for high FSB and your finding your system won't POST, its worth remembering that depending on what memory divider and BSEL (FSB) strap your using, you may need to change your PL (Performance Level) setting. Values worth using are 8, 9, and 10.
2. If you find your memory has a lot of errors, remember a simple small voltage bump can cure all that ails you. When that doesn't work relaxing memory timings may be the solution you need. Its pretty complex to go into the details for that, so for now I'll leave it at that.
3. When OCing don't push for the max right away. Set your CPU multiplier to as low as it will go, and experiment with how high you can get FSB. On any modern Core 2 CPU, 450-500+FSB should not be too difficult to attain. Quad core CPUs are more difficult, but with the right know-how and a little luck, you should be able to get 450-475+FSB.
4. Test your components thoroughly. Impatience is a OCers worst enemy. Once you know what your CPUs maximum stable frequency is, maximum stable FSB, and maximum stable memory frequency, then, and ONLY then, are you ready to push all 3 to get your 24/7 stable OC.
Many new PC users will ask whats the point in OCing and is it dangerous. The simple answer to that question is its only dangerous if you don't take the necessary precautions. Unlike a lot of people who will answer the other part of that question with "because it makes your system faster", I'll give a slightly more technical explanation.
Theres many points I could use to explain the point in OCing, but I'll use just one point, which is probably most relevent. In todays age of computers regardless of how powerful a system is even at stock, any half decent graphics card is going to be quite severely bottlenecked by the rest of the system. How is this so? Its called CPU throughput bottlenecking and bandwidth limitation. Basically this means the system can't move fast enough to keep up with the requests of the graphics card. Its not very easy to clearly, simply, and accurately explain all the interaction that goes on bentween memory, CPU and GPU, so I'll give a simple example.
You just went out and bought a new system, great! It has a Core 2 Duo E7200 and a HD4830 graphics card. You score 10,000 points in 3DMark06 at a 1280*1024 screen resolution. Not bad, or so it would appear. In truth, due to CPU throughput bottlenecking and bandwidth limitation that HD4830 is being bottlenecked to the tune of some 20-30%. That is why OCing is useful. You reduce or completely eliminate those bottlenecking problems. Even if you were to increase screen resolution to a much less CPU dependent resolution such as 1680*1050 where the ratio shifts much more toward the GPU rather than the CPU and memory bandwidth, you will still notice a considerable boost. I could go into even more details, but I think that answers the rookie question without overloading their brain too much
