How to protect from ESD? WHO HAS THE FACTS?!?

There is no way to protect against ESD entirely, you can merely attempt to reduce static buildup and ensure it has a better path to go through than your components.

Lets take this from a more industrial side than a home user side since that is where most of the ESD concern comes in. The main issue with ESD isn't that it can kill components immediately, that would make it less scary in the industry, the main issue is that it can wound a component and you have no way of telling without destructive analysis techniques, you can't catch a wounded unit before it leaves the facility, you will only know when you get it back and it shows signs of ESD during failure analysis.

In factories you get some granularity in how much ESD protection you get through a combination of:
ESD jackets, wrist straps, Heel-toe straps, Ionizers, Humidifiers, and in extreme cases carefully controlled clean rooms with antistatic suits.
The humidifiers keep you from building up a charge(ever been zapped on a humid summer day? Unlikely. Dry winter day? All the time!), the ESD jackets are conductive and will help to spread out any charge you get and help it dissipate. The wrist straps are connected to a ground point, and the heel toe straps dissipate static through them while you walk around(ESD coating on the floors of most electronics plants). The ionizers blow charged air over components to dissipate any charges that build up on them, but this doesn't really impact how much charge you build up.


ESD is very random, you could build 1000 computers in the super dry winter wearing wool socks and a down jacket and never have a problem, or you could build one on the humidest day of summer in nothing but your shorts and kill your graphics card, you can't prevent ESD entirely, you can only make it less likely.



Now, onto what people say.
1. Refer to above paragraph, some people are lucky, some aren't, it also depends on your climate, the amazon will have very low static buildup, McMurdo base in Antarctica is a different story.

2. Touching the case ballances your charge with the case, the case being a large metal object can absorb a fair amount of charge without changing its voltage potential significantly so that will help.

3. This is probably the best one, having the PSU switched off breaks the line in, but does not cut the ground connection, the screws into the PSU will tie the case to earth ground so attaching the wrist strap to the case brings you down pretty close to earth ground.

4. Until you turn on the PSU it isn't putting out power, and its housing is tied to earth ground so if it is dangerous it is going to trip a breaker quick. Also, what kind of ground is there other than an earth ground?!?

5. Refer to 2.