[Klaustrophobia]

I've had systems fail to start the first time.  It was never necessary to pull everything back out to fix it.  Usually just a not fully seated module, card, or power connector.  Building it outside the case first seems like a massive waste of time to me.

[Gee1337]

A professional builder will most likely build out the case to make sure it POSTs, but personally I have never bothered.

What might be an idea is to connect several parts to your mobo outside of the case such as CPU, RAM and in some cases the heatsink... so that you can drop the mobo in as one block. It might be an idea to do this, as well as hooking up SATA cables and the front panel connectors. I would recommend that you fit you GPU last, as the size of them can often obscure other connections like SATA cables... depending on the mobo layout.

With regards to earthing yourself, fit the PSU to your case and plug it into the mains. There is no need to turn the power on at the mains either, which will keep you safe as well! Also, make use of the anti-static bag that the mobo comes in, as that will help protect the mobo when building. Don't bother with the cardboard box... in all honesty I generally hold the components by their edges and place the mobo anti-static cover on top of the box it came in, then start playing lego.

Before turning new build on, I would follow a basic checklist:-

1) CPU in securely and heatsink fitted securely
2) RAM plugged in
3) HDD/SSD/DVD/BRD connected
4) All components that require PSU power connected
5) Front panel connected
6) GPU plugged in and powered by PSU
7) EVERYTHING securely in place and screwed down where necessary
8) Monitor connected
9) Leave the side panel off just in case you need to go back into the case
10) Windows disc at the ready

Obviously, the above isn't in a particular order... but if that list is satisfied you are good to go. Be ready to jump into the BIOS straight away (usually by hitting DEL) as you will most likely need to change the boot order in the BIOS so you can load Windows.

Once again I hope this helps. If anyone else can see anything I've missed from that list, obviously please post it and I will edit this post for Mongoose to follow!

[rev_posix]

Going to have to agree with the others.  If you have the room in the case, mount the board in it, put in the bare necessities (RAM, video, CPU), hook up the power and see if the magic smoke comes out, and go from there. 

Just make sure you don't drag your feet when putting things together and touch something metal that's grounded every so often, just to be a bit paranoid. 

[Mongoose]

Oh yeah, I'm gonna have my hand glued to some bare metal in the case.

[Klaustrophobia]

Glue is an insulator.


(unverified)

[Mongoose]

Welp, it's here.  Insert the "I have no idea what I'm doing" dog meme.

I dragged my feet on monitors for a few days, but I started digging into them last night, and...hoo boy.  I guess between ignorance and naivete, I hadn't realized that LCD technology has stagnated in a bunch of ways over the past several years.  That TN-vs-IPS divide is a *****: if you get great color and viewing angles, you have to sacrifice the ability to see anything better than 60FPS.  (You can apparently get both, if you want to spend like $900, which is a biiiiit excessive as far as I'm concerned.)  At this point it seems like you almost have to grit your teeth and bear with it until OLED technology matures enough to enter the market.  I did find a really highly-rated 144Hz 1ms TN display from ASUS that I'll link in here, but I still don't know if it's worth giving up on IPS, since I'm obviously going to be using my machine for more than just pure gaming.  But while I figure that out, what I should ponder is whether my ancient CRT can survive 1600x1200 without bursting into flames.

(I also saw someone mention this prospective display technology whose name I can't remember, where each pixel is essentially its own electron gun.  Apparently it would have been pretty much the best of all worlds display-wise...but then all the manufacturers cut off their research as LCDs became ubiquitous.  Figures.)

EDIT: It's running!  And installing Windows 7!  And it drew some blood, so it's a real build!  And I'm...freaking exhausted.   You guys didn't mention how emotionally draining this would be.  The build itself went really well as a whole.  I can't say enough about this case's plethora of openings for cable management (just do me a favor and don't look behind the motherboard).  I did run into one glitch the first time I fired everything up: when I was just booting into the BIOS, the stock CPU fan started screaming like a turboprop, and the CPU temp climbed to 70 and seemed to want to keep going.  Turns out I hadn't properly fastened it into place, so it wasn't making full contact with the CPU.  (Also didn't realize that even the pre-applied thermal paste winds up going all gooey when you start running.)  Even without an aftermarket cooler, I figured I'd **** that part up somehow. It took me a few tries, but I got it to click in properly, and now the thing sounds fine.  Of course I might have avoided this if Intel's directions had included any text whatsoever instead of essentially being a goddamn LEGO manual...

Oh, and here's the ASUS TN display I mentioned earlier.  But while I was looking that up, lo and behold this 144 Hz IPS pops up for a $200 discount, and it's 2560x1440 to boot.  That's still about $200 more than I'd really wanted to spend as my max, but it seems like an absolute beast of a choice, and if it's going to last me a long time...hell, maybe I would splurge on it.

There's also this AOC 27" job that gives 144 Hz.  Damn this **** is complicated...

[Mongoose]

My God this SSD is pure sex.  I can go from hitting the power button to looking at my desktop in just over ten seconds.  Getting back on this old machine while I'm setting everything up is just painful; I can see now why everyone says they'll never go back to an HDD-only setup.  I did wind up accidentally putting the system reserved partition onto the HDD instead (made the rookie mistake of having both connected during Windows installation, and I didn't really pay attention to which SATA ports I was using), but I copied the boot files over to the SSD and deleted the partition without incident.  I've been Googling all sorts of one-off questions, and I managed to figure out how to enable XMP to let my RAM live up to its full potential, which is one more thing I had no clue about before all of this. I have some birthday gifts due to me, so I think I'm going to pick up a G502 mouse, and fiddle around with any keyboards Best Buy has on display to see what feels good.

Other revelations: a BIOS with graphical menus and mouse support!  And a Nvidia control panel that lets you auto-update your drivers without having to dig through support pages!  It's amazing what happens when you're cut off from all progress for a decade.  Now I just need to figure out which of these half-dozen monitor and utility programs I installed off the hardware disks are actually worth keeping around...

I definitely still could use a hand with the display, though.  If nothing else, I'd love to hear what you guys are using right now, or anything you're planning on buying.

[LHN91]

I'll give you more suggestions on monitors, but I'm using a pair of cast-offs (a 23" 2K Samsung with a cracked bezel and a 22" 1680x1050 Acer) and have never spent much money on screens (or any of my parts, to be honest). So understand where I'm standing here:

I wouldn't be concerned about high refresh rates, personally - I'd go with a 60hz IPS with decent color accuracy over a 120/144hz TN panel any day, and would be leery of spending more than 200-250 to do so.

[CP5670]

Good to hear that everything is working well.

And yes, LCD technology has stagnated for a long time now. Even IPS displays are rather overrated. They have accurate midtones but the black levels are just as bad as TNs, and they have other issues like IPS glow and more motion blur at high framerates. The only major benefit they offer is the viewing angles. Both technologies would be destroyed by OLED if we ever get some actual computer monitors based on that. That Asus is good overall though and doesn't involve many compromises (although it's better suited for AMD cards due to freesync). The monitor is the most important part of any build, and it's definitely worth spending some money there.

[Mongoose]

I'm done some thinking on it, and as drool-worthy as it is, I don't really feel like I can justify spending $600 on a monitor, especially considering what I just spent on the entire system and the other usual financial commitments of life.  Plus, with my luck, I'd shell out that crazy amount only to see comparable displays pop up for half as much within a year.  I was also out on a shopping trip with the 'rents tonight, and I came to the realization that a 27" screen is...pretty goddamn big.  Probably too much so, when it comes down to it (though it'd sure as hell match this monster of a case that, as I suspected, really doesn't fit well around my desk ).  Not to mention that there's no guarantee a single GTX970 would be able to handle new games in QHD at anything above 60FPS in the first place, at least not without toning down some settings.  So at least as of right now, I'm leaning towards this 144Hz ASUS.  I know it's a TN display, but I feel like if I have to compromise between somewhat-better color fidelity and unleashed framerates, I'd want to stick with the latter.  Plus this particular model seems to have extremely good reviews and was recommended on a "best gaming monitors" listing or two I came across.

Also I was the brief owner of a Logitech G602 after a stop in Office Max, until I realized that I could get the same thing for $10 less on Newegg, and besides I didn't wind up liking it as much as the G502 I was leaning towards.  The long-life wireless is a big plus, but I didn't like the lack of dual-function (or even sideways-tilt) scrolling, and the six thumb buttons seemed too small to use reliably.

[Mongoose]

Welp, I went ahead and ordered that ASUS display, which should be arriving on Monday.  Also picked up the Logitech G502, so pretty much the only thing still wanting is a new keyboard.  Unfortunately it doesn't look like any storefront around here actually sells mechanical keyboards, so I may wind up needing to trust some reviews on that one.  Still, that's a fairly low priority.

I also haven't managed to blow up the system yet, despite doing a bit of tinkering with things.  I've discovered that the ASUS AI Suite 3 that I wound up installing looks like it can do a frightening number of things, though what I also discovered is that it has my CPU listed as running at 4.4 GHz, instead of the stock 4.0.  It seems like that's a result of selecting the extreme memory profile in the BIOS to take advantage of the full 2133 MHz memory clock; would the CPU generally be boosted automatically as a result as well?  Since I am on the stock cooler, I don't want to accidentally wind up screwing it up, though the idle temperature is somewhere around 45 C or so according to the utility..  I also discovered the built in Fan Xpert 3 utility, which can do an automatic tuning of your case fans, and then lets you select from a few preset modes.  Doing that and then setting it to Standard has all of the fans running much more quietly, which is good as far as I'm concerned.  There is one thing I don't understand, though: separate from the tuning is a Benchmark feature for your fans, but every time I attempt to run it, halfway through I get a warning about the CPU overheating.  I'm not exactly sure what the function is attempting to do, and the temperatures afterwards don't seem any different, so I'm not sure what's going on there.

Edit: Well I figured part of it out at least.  When I select the XMP profile in the BIOS, the CPU core ratio setting is changed from Auto to "Sync All Cores."  I can then go back and set it to Auto on my own before leaving the BIOS.  Putting it on Auto seems to make the CPU run substantially cooler, which is obviously what I want.  I'm not sure why the XMP was automatically changing the setting there, though. And running it that cool allowed the Benchmark option in the fan utility to successfully complete, so again I guess that's good things.   The weird thing is that the frequency is still consistently showing as 4.4 GHz in the utility...which I guess is normal? (If it helps, the BCLK frequency is set to 100 HMz, and the ratio to 44, though I can decrease the ratio as low as 41 manually.) Again, I have no idea what the hell I'm doing here; I just don't want to break something.

[Fury]

Since you already bought Logitech G502, you may want to consider Logitech G710+ for a keyboard. I have it and so far it's been good. As a bonus you wouldn't need to install another software, since Logitech Gaming Software handles all G-products.