you forgot the most important step - ground yourself in some way, especially in the winter (dry air) and especially on carpet or if you're wearing clothes that can produce static electricity. One little spark can wreck your whole day. What I generally do is plug the power supply into the wall and then touch the case every time I move. Plugging it in grounds it, and that will dissipate the static electricity.
Also we should mention to be VERY careful when securing the heatsink clip to the CPU with the screwdriver. It's very easy to slip, especially on older heatsink designs which did not have that nice plastic guard but which instead just had a plastic hook you pressed on with the screw driver. It takes so much force to put that thing on that one slip can wreck your mobo.
We should also mention the importance of a good cooling scheme. I've seen lots of people just slap fans in their case without paying any attention to which way they're blowing. The proper way to vent a case is to suck air in from the front bottom and blow it out the top rear. The PSU usually takes care of the blowing it out part. You'll want one or two (sometimes more depending on what you're running) fans up front to suck in the air. These days, a sidemount fan never hurts either - I won't buy a case without it at this point.
|