Basic Building Tips

Question

When mounting the Heat Sink and Fan be sure to be very careful to center it and to be gentle with the mounting clips. Get rough here and it will break. If you remove it then be sure to completely clean off the old Thermal Paste and to apply new paste each time it is removed and reseated. Air gaps here can kill a CPU. Be sure to carefully follow any instructions on your thermal paste so that you use the right amount and distribute it properly on the CPU for your setup.
When mounting the motherboard make sure there is nothing under the board except the proper risers and that they all line up with the correct holes in your motherboard. It is more common than you may guess to mess up here and burn up a perfectly good motherboard.
Make sure before you power up that all the power connectors are firmly seated and in place where they need to be. The square 4 pin connector on the motherboard must have a connection from the Power Supply as well as the 20 pin. In the case of the newer 24 pin ATX specs you won't have a 20 and a 4 pin  plug as they are now combined. Be sure to make sure you have the right PSU for your motherboard.
Double check that the system and CPU fans are properly plugged in and they turn freely without power. (Don't stick fingers or other objects into a running fan).
Make sure that all the drives have power and are plugged into the motherboard according to your manual. In the case of a Sata drive most will have two different Power Connections but you should only use one power connector per drive.
Do a quick check that there is nothing shorting against the motherboard or cards in the machine. Keep metal or conductive objects away from any component boards or power connections.
Make sure the D-Bracket is install correctly. This can be a key piece of equipment to check if you have any post problems. You can check what the LED's mean here.
Double check that your RAM is firmly seated and inserted in the right direction in the socket. Don't laugh but I heard one guy that forced it in the wrong way and wondered why he could not post. Luckily he did not fry something.
Make sure your AGP and all other cards are properly seated. Many times a fix for displays not working is just that simple.
OK we are almost ready to fire up. As this pertains to A64's make sure that you have a power supply that is either approved for use by MSI/AMD or that you have plenty of amps on the 12 volt rail. Typically we have noted many issues based on stability with PSU's being rated at less than 24A on the 12v rail. More could become needed as you add componants like multiple SLi'ed Video cards. Find out what your power requirements are before you assume that you have enough. Too few amps can be as damaging to a system as a bad PSU.
OK fire it up and be prepared to enter CMOS setup with the DEL key. You will need to tap it repeatedly until you enter the CMOS Setup. On first setup some boards require the F1 key is used. Carefully read what is on the screen or reffer to your manual.
Good if you got this far then it is likely that you will be OK from here on out for most things. Start with entering your drive info and prepare to fire up and install windows. Keep in mind that you will need the special drivers to install your SATA Raid drives if you have any. When the windows install starts you need to keep tapping the F6 key to load those drivers from the diskette MSI supplied. "If you are using an Nvidia3 chipset with a single SATA drive and not raiding, you can skip this step, it will automatically be recognized by windows." (Tip Provided by timkessler)
If you did not make it to the CMOS setup then check for what LED's are lit on the D-bracket. Fix any problems that are indicated and repeat the prior step. In many cases a system will fail at the CPU if there is a RAM Timing issue or bad RAM. This is simply because the RAM controller is inside of the CPU now.
Now that you have your drives setup close and save CMOS Setup and proceed to install windows. Make sure that you do a clean install so that only those drivers needed are loaded into windows and running. Just transferring your drive to a newly built system is never a good idea as things will not be properly setup for your new components and you are just making more work for yourself in the end. If the info is needed on that drive then at least try a repair install so that you can get up and running. Be sure to back up that essential data and then do a clean install. Your system will thank you many times over.
Here is a link to help you through some of the items listed in Bios.
OK now you have Windows install, you need to make sure that all the motherboard drivers get installed first. They should be on a CD supplied with the motherboard or you can find them at MSI's download site. If you download them be very careful to only use the drivers for the parts you have. Any other drivers can cause damage to your system.
After all the Motherboard drivers are installed then install DirectX and any Microsoft updates for windows.
Install Video card Drivers, Sounds Card, Mouse and any other parts drivers you have in you machine. Keep in mind that if you install these before the Motherboard Drivers you will likely as not have many things that do not work right or at full speed. The order that you install things is important.
You can do some basic checks now to determine system health. Memtest86 can help you with basic memory testing. This is important as if you have memory issues with either timing or bad memory a lot of strange problems can crop up or you may not even get the system to run. Prime95 is also a very useful tool to help you determine overall system stability. 3D Marks 2001 SE can help determine your overall system health as well as testing your graphics card and determining overall system performance. There are alot of benchmarks and system tests out there to help you determine how your system is doing. Chose something basic like I showed to get you started.
At this stage you can now install software for the Internet or other uses. I typically wait and do some basic benchmarks on a system before anything gets loaded for normal operation but it is not a needed step. Do be sure to setup a Firewall to protect you before you get connected to the web though. It takes a very short period, usually measured in seconds, for an unprotected system to get messed up by spyware and trojans.
Enjoy your machine.
If you are going to overclock make sure to run the system for a few days first to make certain that things are stable and properly burned in. This step requires some knowledge so do your research. I am not going into those steps here as they are for advanced users and could void your warranties. If you decide to overclock be sure you are prepared to be able to replace parts if you do things wrong and at extra expense in most cases. Make sure if you do overclock you work with good test software to help you find the limits and do it in small steps. That will reduce but not eliminate the possibility of damaging something.
This list is currently a work in progress and will be added too over the next days and weeks. If you have something to add please PM me and I will add it in.
Edited 3-27-2005 Tiresmoke

Answer 1

OK, just to finish this once and for all since my rig is working flawlessly for one month now.
1. YES, you need to estimate your total current consumption on each rail and particularly on the 12 V rail.
2. YES, you need a brand name PSU, if possible with active PFC.
3. YES, your PSU's total current on 12V rail must cover your estimated calculation.
4. NO, you don't need to apply an enormous safety margin which conducts you to min. 24A on the 12V rail.
I have built an FX55 system with MSI Neo4 Platinum, 2x512 MB DDRAM OCZ 4001024ELDC-K memory, with 2x120 GB Maxtor SATA, Philips 1840K DVD-RW internal, Radeon X850XT PE video, Thermaltake case XaserV (with 5 case fans), Thermaltake PSU Purepower 560W 22A/12 V. The estimated current on 12A was 17,4 A.
It runs perfectly since one month, without any problem, and before you tell me that the safety margin is needed for future expansion, let me tell you that this is pure BS. I will never expand this system, when it will become obsolete it will be a major upgrade including Mb/video/proc and in this case changing the PSU will mean almost nothing compared to the total cost.
Besides, it is an absurd idea to think that you'll buy a PSU for life and that all your PC will be upgraded except for the PSU that you'll keep eternally. The ATX form factor's future is not certain, BTX is slowly coming, ATX 2.0 is already here with dedicated connectors for PCIX etc. etc. It is simply not worth it to invest in a golden plated PSU which you'll change anyway shortly.