My Hardware Testing workbench. 

I was tired of testing hardware inside computer cases so I decided to set up a workbench for convenient testing. Now I can easily swap hardware and do my tests sitting in a chair instead of on the floor and without the danger of spilling my coffee on the carpet. 

Page 3.

Page 3.

While testing hardware looks simple, a person can't afford to become careless. One little mistake can cost you. I had an 800mHz AMD Duron CPU that I used on several boards with no problems. One day while doing a quick test, I pulled the CPU out of one board, cleaned the thermal compound off it and its heat sink, placed the CPU in the new board, added new thermal compound as I had done many times before, put the heatnsink and fan in place, turned the power on and immediately destroyed the CPU. What did I do wrong?
In my haste I didn't get the heatsink positioned correctly - it was cocked upon the high end of the CPU ZIF socket - not making good contact with the CPU. There went my coffee money for the next several days. Haste makes waste. UGH!