is buying OEM worth the money saved over retail?

[sniperruff]

is buying OEM ...say athlonXP and installing heatsink/fan for another $15 worth the trouble to save some couple of bucks?
or is the retail HS good enough?
---another question: is the athlon's selling now (say... on googlegear) the new throghbred or the old .18um one?

thank you very much

 

[Boonesmi]

the palomino (the old athlonxp) goes up to 2200+ and if i was buying an athlon xp i would assume it was the old palomino unless it is specifically stated otherwise 🙂

as for oem vs retail... its my understand that the quality of cpu's are identical (meaning they dont sell lower quality cpu's as the OEM)
so basically it boils down to whats important to you 🙂

do you want/need the longer warranty you get with a retail chip? do you plan on using the retail hsf if you get a retail chip?

for me the answer is "no" to both of the above questions, so i buy oem... but if you answer yes to both, then maybe retail is the way you should go 😀

 

[sniperruff]

i just wonder if the retail HS/fan will last through normal uses...
and after looking at the guide on AMD's site i realized that the installing HS/fan part is so easy
then i found out that a good HS/fan costs like $20
that only leaves like $5 for the trouble of installing the HS and sans warranty

thanks Boonesmi 😀

 

[Boonesmi]

but a good hsf will keep you a lot cooler then the retail one 🙂

i have an epox 8k3a+ with an athlonxp 1500+ overclocked to 1700mhz (athlon pr rating of xp2050+) and the idle temp stays around 37c when under full load it only gets to the mid 40's

thats with a thermalright ax7... if i used the retail hsf i would probably have problems running at this speed

 

[BuddyAtBzboyz]

The way I look at it is if you overclock you should get the oem cause you are voiding your warranty anyways and you probably won't be satisfied with the retail hsf for overclocking. If you are not overclocking I say go with the retail the fan will handle the processor at its normal speed.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

It's not worth to buy OEM if you're in the US.

To claim warranty for any retail thing is a piece of cake in the US, just tell them it's not working, get a rma number, send back (some manufacturers even pay for shipping or don't need you to send back the defective item), wait for a new or refurb. replacement.
This is the American way of doing business.
If you're in other countries, that'd be a different story.

The price difference of sub $200 cpu today is so small, even less than $10. Even you're going to get a better HSF to overclock it to the extreme, you should buy retail to get the easy to abuse warranty. Also, retail cpu has a good protection box for shipping.

Remember, any OEM thing is supposed to sell to system builders, not end-users, manufacturers won't provide warranty to end-users mostly. If something goes wrong, you've to deal with the reseller, then the reseller has to deal with their wholesaler, the wholesaler has to deal with their distributor, then the distributor has to deal with the manufacturer finally. Unless the reseller can take the loss to give you a replacement immediately, you've to wait a long time to get the replacement.
If you're not in the US, some retail stuff's warranty are done in this way too.

 

[BuddyAtBzboyz]

To claim warranty for any retail thing is a piece of cake in the US, just tell them it's not working, get a rma number, send back (some manufacturers even pay for shipping or don't need you to send back the defective item), wait for a new or refurb. replacement.

Well if you know a company that doesn't make you send back the defective item let me know and I'll get myself a athlon mp and say its defective then have 2 and get a dually system going!

 

[Kingofcomputer]

It's Microsoft, for Mouse, Keyboard such cheapy item.

 

[BuddyAtBzboyz]

Yeah I remember that on the intelimouse explorer the first ones had a problem with the cord coming loose or some such. Haven't heard of any companies besides that that I can remember.