Dif between OEM and retail?????????

[Sevenhunt]

Hi,

a lot of comp stores sell the same products only 1 is OEM and 1 is retail.
What`s the dif? Price is almost the same....

thx

 

[elninyo821]

OEM is just the bare drive or card, whatever the case may be, usually just included is the hardware inside a static bag, sometimes with manual and cable, cards and cd/dvd drives are usually like this, OEM hdd's are just sold as is, drive w/ nothing else.

Retail.. well.. u know the difference now dont u?

 

[Sevenhunt]

yep, thx

 

[Rhombuss]

Just to add, OEM products generally come with shorter warranty periods than retail products.

 

[dkozloski]

Do your research when you purchase OEM products. They are made for Original Equipment Manufacturers like Dell, Gateway, and the like to their specifications. Video and sound cards can lack important features as ordered by the assemblers, usually to make them cheaper. RAID and SCSI cards can have unique firmware. For the most part you are pretty safe but I have seen some strange stuff show up when I thought I ordered something pretty standard.

 

[ai42]

Be careful some OEM parts carry no warranty at all.

Honestly if you KNOW what your doing and do static kill stuff and troubleshoot you should be ok with OEM parts.

 

[Varun]

Also in the case of CPU's the Retail comes in a nice box with a heat sink attached (not always a good one but the newer ones can be ok-check each one out before you buy) and the OEM comes with a much shorter warranty and no heat sink attached.

With OEM you can easily add any HSF you want, and read the chip numbers.

Retail you can just drop it in and go plus extra warranty.