[Zkage]

Hello all. Just started off at this forum. For the past 3 years, I have not kept a system at home; been working with a office laptop.
The major reasons were saving up for a hi spec system and not finding enough time for the system with work+studies,thus the expenditure not being practical.

Finally close to ending my masters so i have been checking up on available hardware etc as well. One major concern for me is the durability of the hardware. All the previous systems that I have owned, from the age of the nvidia 6800gt and other legacy cards, have blown up, lost motherboards, fried Ram and scrambled graphics cards.

The frequency of lost motherboards etc has been a constant thorn. What I would like to request from all of you nice, uptodate ppl the best way to maintain your system?
in terms of power surges, grounding and how to check up on the health.
are there some best practices which could be floated around?

for example:
Dusting off your pc each week;
Putting some device to check surges? grounding? ( when you are bare feet and touch the metal part of the casing to feel a slight shock)
Major reasons for hardware failure ?

The point being: i do not wish to spend a lot of money building up a brand new rig, complete with ups,stabilizer etc and then having to see it blow up/fry in a year.