Preparation

ESD - electrostatic discharge

After you get all the parts, you have to clear a work area for building your system. A large wooden table will be fine for our purposes. Place an empty trashcan next to the table; you'll be discarding a lot of packaging material. Also, get a couple band-aids just in case you cut yourself.

Static kills. When working with computer components you always have to be conscious of possible electrostatic discharge. ESD can fry components if you're not careful. Remember to ground yourself before touching any components. Touch a metal part of the case to equalize your static charges before handling any parts.

If you're concerned with static electricity (or just paranoid like Kenn), you can purchase ESD kits that consist of an anti-static mat and wristband. The mat has its own ground wire, and you attach the wristband to the mat. You can also just wear the wristband and attach it to the case if you don't have the mat. We have a 3M ESD bench kit in our FiringSquad lab, and we haven't lost any hardware to static electricity.

Handling components

Open up the components, and place them on the table. Take it easy on the boxes in the opening process. It's nice to have an undamaged box if you have to return a defective product. Try not to touch any chips or IC's on the expansion cards; fingers are dirty and oily. Hold expansion cards by their metal brackets or edges. Touching the bracket should equalize the charge between you and the card, but you still shouldn't touch anything on the card just to be safe.

Getting started

Keep in mind that this is a guide for beginners. Experienced people can skip many of these steps, but we're taking the "cautious" approach. System builders with experience can just throw everything together, say a little prayer and switch on the power. If the system doesn't work, Mr. Experienced will know how to troubleshoot the system and have it up and running in no time.

Newbies fear not! We're on your side. The building process in this guide is geared towards the beginner. That means loads of testing and lots of helpful hints.