Safe to connect only Mobo, Chip Fan, and Power switch to power supply?

[x047x]

So something in my box took a crap on me tonight. Basically it crashed while I was installing a game and when I went to restart, it didn't. No beeps, no display, no booting nothin'. The drives and fans all spin up but that's it. I took the CMOS battery out for an hour but that didn't help. Now I'm left with going through each piece one by one and testing them.

So... I want to start my testing with the connections coming off my power supply. To do that I need to power up the mobo so I can turn the power supply on with the case switch but I want to connect as little as possible so I can determine if it's my mobo. or not.

Will it be safe to connect only my motherboard, chip, heatsink and power switch? Also, if you have any ideas what will happen in the situation regarding beeps or something I'll take any help I can get.

My setup is as such:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-M%&SLI-S4
Chip: Athlon 6400+
Ram: 3 Gigs, 2x512 and 2x1024
Power Supply: 600w "Cooler Master" (i.e. something generic)
Video: Dual geforce 8800 GTS's
HDD: 250g Western Digital, 500g Samsung
Display: 40" Samsung 1080p LCD HDTV (yeah I'm bragging)

EDIT: I'm not O/C'd at all...

Here's a picture of a bunch of bugs that apparently were hanging all over the motherboard which is leading me to think something shorted out, and a picture of some of my hardware:

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Yup, it's safe as long as you have the motherboard on a non conductive surface. That's a common procedure to help eliminate any shorts that may be occurring.

 

[x047x]

Ok, just making sure... and when you say non-conductive does that mean it shouldnt' be back in my case yet? I figured it would be better to be grounded...

thanks

 

[Atomic Rooster]

It's best to leave it out of the case for testing. Set it on something like the bag the motherboard came packed in.

 

[x047x]

Glad I clarified, thanks for the help.