To ensure successful installation of your soundcard, you should follow the instructions provided by the manufacturer of the card. There are however, some general procedures involved with most cards on the market. Typically, these steps apply to both Mac and PC. Beginner, intermediate or advanced users should be able to find useful tips here.

Installing hardware into a computer is pretty easy, as long as you don't let yourself become intimidated by technology. Your computer should be powered-down (turned off) when attempting any installation. You might even decide to go the extra step and unplug the power supply, but this usually isn't necessary - just don't stab the screwdriver into the motherboard!

Next, remove the side panel of the tower. Many of today's motherboards have very few PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) slots in which to install soundcards, or other hardware. This is because as technology advances, more and more devices are connected to the system by FireWire (iEEE-1394) or USB 2.0. Make sure that the PCI slot area is free of cabling and wires.

When removing the card from it's protective static-bag, you should never touch the surface of the card.
Hold it either by the edge of the board, or by the metal plate where the connectors are. If you were to touch the surface of the card, you could potential short it out by static electricity. And with computers, this is not a good thing!

You always want to make sure that you are grounded (free of static electricity) when installing hardware into computers. If you aren't fortunate enough to have a grounding strip, here's a simple thing to do to quickly ground yourself: with your computer's power supply still plugged in, touch the power supply for a few seconds. The power supply is grounded, and if there were any static electricity running through your body, it would be absorbed by the power supply. Now, typically, the order of card installation isn't really important save for a few types of cards: The graphics card should be in the first slot, and if you are using a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) card, that should be in the last slot.

Usually, if space allows, you should keep the cards two slots away from each other. The reasoning behind this is that the PCI bus allows for only so-much bandwidth per channel, and quite often two side-by-side slots can share the same PCI channel. So, with this in mind, you should keep the graphics card and the sound card at least one space apart from each other, as shown in the picture on the left. Make sure that the card is snug in the slot and will not shake loose. Now screw the faceplate into the tower's case.

The hard part's done. Now that the hardware is installed into your system, you should power-up your system. Windows-based machines will automatically detect the new hardware, and open up the Add New Hardware Wizard. Quite often, all you will need to do is to insert the driver CD into your CD drive and follow the instructions on the Wizard. Sometimes the driver installation can be a little more complex. If you follow the instructions provided with the card by the manufacturer, it should be smooth sailing.