so, when i built my first pc, the one i have now, 4 years ago, i did not us a wrist ground. why, because i was cheap. so, i'm wondering, what parts would be most effected by the act of being ungrounded while working in a pc? i'm thinking of starting to replace parts and eventually upgrading to windows 7. the power supply and dvd drive wouldn't be effect by static shock, would they? and is the atx form factor still the norm or is it going out?
It are usually the little components on the motherboard who can get damaged from this. If you just hold the case with one hand, that should ground yourself properly. And yes, ATX is still the most used form factor. There are some variations to the ATX form factor, like micro-ATX. This one is smaller, but fully backward-compatible with ATX.