So I've been doing some reading, but want to ask my question directly, because I have not seen it asked yet in my travels.

I currently have a stock cooled Q9550 (2.85gHz), evga 780i mobo, 4 gigs of ddr2 800 ram, OCZ 750watt power supply, NZXT Hush Case.

How can I safetly bump my processor? Multipliers? I'm not looking to go extreme, just a little safe bump. I'm considering buying an aftermarket cpu cooler in the future as well. I was hoping for at least 3gHz, if not more.

If it matters, I also run 2 512mb 8600gts cards in sli.

You can't increase the multiplier on non-extreme edition cpus. You can lower it, but that is pointless.

The way to OC is to increase fsb, the same way as every OC. Nvidia chipset boards are annoying to OC unless you are a pro though, so don't expect anything crazy. 3.0ghz is doable, though you may have to go with an after market cooler.

alright. thanks for the tip. What do I increase my fsb to?

Increase your fsb in 5 mhz chunks and then stability test. I recommend OCCT as it is really quick and works well. Orthos is also quite popular, but it needs to be run longer than OCCT and you have to run 2 instances and then set the affinity. OCCT is just easier and more convenient.