Once upon a time in my parents’ garage I learned that the best way to change a distributor cap[0] is to take a spark plug wire off the old one and immediately plug it into the right socket on the new cap. That way you don’t get wires mixed up and cause problems. As it turns out, that method works great for computers, too. I had to swap system boards in one of my servers the other day, and setting them up next to each other was great. Take a part off the old board and immediately place it on the new one, which avoids damage and confusion.
Since I’ve been digging around in the guts of machines for years I’d probably have been fine taking everything off the old board all at once, but when it’s so easy to do it safely why not?
[0] Not that anybody changes distributor caps anymore. 🙁