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Check your jumpers before screwing in harddrives and CDROMs.

Either that or invest in a nice pair of hemostats.

Don't freak out when something doesn't work. Check your connections because its probably a small mistake that can be easily fixed.

This is always my problem. If everything doesn't work on the first try, I go NUTS, post in every forum possible, and then do a good amount of kicking something. Always go back through and check everything before posting a problem.

If you're still frustrated, put it down for a while. Take a break and maybe pick it up the next day. Your head will be clear, and most of your frustrations will be gone.

Quote from Xnarg : Standoffs Install standoffs between the motherboard and the case, if required. Standoffs are metal or plastic separators which keep motherboard circuits from shorting out if they touch the metal case. Standoffs are usually included with the case. Failure to use standoffs can lead to complete failure of the motherboard or other components such as the power supply unit or video card.

I also agree with this. I have had a short quite a few times when not going slow and missing an extra screw.

If you have to use force to plug in a connector, STOP! and look again to see if have the wrong orientation, ie., you have have the connector turned upside down (usually on HDD ribbon cables).

I would read up as much as one could possibly read up on a subject, like installing a motherboard, or building a system as possible. Really helps out when you find out more info.

Keep the inside of your system clean. Use zip ties to tie cables together, and use velcro or metal clips to hide wires on the top, front, back and bottom of the case.

1) Don't cheap out on parts for your computer. Sometimes spending the extra $10 or $20 to get a good brand name part instead of a generic part can make the difference between that part lasting 5 years or 5 months. Good resources for reviewing your parts are www.anandtech.com and www.tomshardware.com.

Also, pay attention to warrenties and OEM / retail status. Sometimes, getting the OEM version of a part will save you $5 or so, but you will get stuck with a warentee of only 90 days or a year where the retail version can get you 3, 4, or even 5 years of warentee coverage. It's worth the extra $5!

2) If possible, buy your CPU and motherboard as a combo. Installing a CPU and heatsink is one of the most difficult and potentially disastrous parts of putting a computer together. Save yourself the headache, and buy the parts already put together.

3) If you put everything together and the computer doesn't work, unplug everything from the motherboard and take out all PCI and/or AGP cards. Put in once piece at a time and test the system. i.e. - plug in the video card, turn on the system. If it works, plug in the hard drive, and test it. Then plug in the optical drives, test it. Etc. This way you will know exactly which part is causing the malfunction and you can deal with it.

I built a system not too long ago and it would not boot... turns out that my modem was really old and the BIOS on my motherboard did not know what to do with it, so it was causing the system to hang. I never would have thought of such a thing, and the only way I solved the problem was using the method above. It works!

keep some band-aids around. Cheap cases can be pretty sharp and I have some battle scars from building computers

Heh. You and me both.

Although nearly impossible if it's your first built, having extra screws and jumpers around really helps. Those buggers have legs.

Look around and get some free parts. checkout craigs list. even if its old pentium boards with 133 proc. Its all the same when building a new system.

Quote from odysseyelite : Look around and get some free parts. checkout craigs list. even if its old pentium boards with 133 proc. Its all the same when building a new system.

Err, not if you can't use anything. Trust me, I've picked up MANY old machines, most of it is unusable stuff from the Pentium 1 era.

If it is your first build, open up a well built completed system carefully and look around in there with a flashlight for a bit. Take a look at the cable routing, look at what different connectors look like, where things are connected, etc. This helped me a lot on my first build when I didn't know where stuff plugged in, what stuff looked like, etc.

Also, as stated above...get some zipties and keep the cables clean in there. It will help with airflow and make things easier to access.