The only thing that concerns the end user is, "DOES IT WORK?!"
There is no need to perform anything more than the most rudimentary diagnostics, and the danger of performing anything extra (slipping with the screwdriver for example) outweighs any benefit. The diagnostics you need to do are limited to
1) Is everything plugged in correctly?
2) Are any diagnostic lights flashing?
3) Is everything that you plugged into it undamaged?
Anything to do with leaky capacitors, underrated resistors, vinegar on the microchips
is down to manufacturing defects. Let the manufacturer worry about those.
Try disassembling the whole thing, and rebuilding it one component at a time... So if you try motherboard + CPU + RAM + Graphics card, with nothing else, and that works, you know that it is a problem elsewhere (or with e.g. the HD controller on your mobo). Eitherway you know it isn't the CPU then, for example. So try adding the harddrives, then the DVD drive, then the network card. When it stops working you know that last bit is part of the problem.
Sometimes PCs do this when you build them, it is likely that everything is OK, just there is one pin somewhere that isn't making good contact. So by reassembling it all you may solve the problem without ever knowing where it was.