OEM and Retail Price difference on TBird is $39 Why?

[TungFree]

OEM and Retail Price is $235 on T-Bird 1000 and $196 on OEM that is $39 difference Why? What am I getting for it is it worth it to get the retail? and shipping is $13 2nd day for the T-Bird since I am purchasing a case there as well will the shipping be discounted in your experience? should I purchase the Tbird 1000 elswhere? I am also purchasing a ASUS K7V-RM VIA KX133 mobo and want to be sure that all is working order on arival.
I definately want the case and motherboard there, but the T-bird is optional justas long as I can get all my products to Hawaii and check them. Any suggestions?

 

[Poof]

The extra cost usually comes from the inclusion of a warranty for X months and the cooling (HS/fan) that comes with the CPU.

 

[TungFree]

Is a cooling fan and warantee worth $39, seems horibly high...? any suggestions if I should try elsewhwere? and re shipping several Items do they just add the shipping of each single item or do they combine and discount?

 

[Buddabudda]

I believe the retail warranty is 3 years, an OEM chip is totally up to the place you purchased from sometimes less than a year but usually one year I believe. You have to buy a hs and fan so if you can find a good combo for less it's no big deal.

 

[Poof]

I've purchased 4 CPUs (2 Xeon IIs, a P3 600, & a Duron 700) all OEM, and have put my own cooling solutions on them (which were usually less than $25). It's up to you if you want to pay the "premium" for peace of mind...

And all of the places I've ordered parts from (if I bought multiple items from the same place), combined them (if possible) and charged one shipping price.

 

[toph99]

don't forget that if you don't know for a fact that this store doesn't do this, they may be testing all of the OEM chips for the best overclockable ones and keep them for themselves/sell them for a higher price, and then sell the ones which wouldn't OC as OEM t'birds.

 

[Fingers]

if you arn't overclocking the retail heatsink will do just fine. so if you arn't going to over clock much and want some garuntee i would go retail. I have never bought a retail cpu but sometimes i worry about breaking them and it would give me some peace of mind to have that three year warrenty. most oems in my experience are 30 day warrenty. one time i bought an oem and it cam with an intel 3 year warrenty and the site said it would only have a 30 day, so i guess it was some type of fluke. well anyways back to the point.

want peace of mind = retail


don't care and not overclocking = retail


don't care and overclocking = oem


peace of mind and overclocking = retail

 

[TungFree]

Thanks for the help I am now informed fillu u each answered and amplified till u cracked the misunderstandings to zerro

 

[Insane3D]

Just curious, you mentioned you were getting a KX133 mobo, the K7V-RM. The TBirds are socket "A", and they run on the KT133 based mobos. The K7V is a slot "A" board for use with "classic" Athlons....

 

[Thump553]

$39 difference is pretty high-I usually see about $25 difference if you shop carefully. OEM comes with ten day warranty, I'm pretty sure-but maybe as much as 30. Retail comes with three year warranty, reasonable set of installation instructions & a little AMD sticker for your case. The instructions can be helpful if you never used that type of processor before-I know they helped me when I built my first slot A Athlon last spring.

I've mostly bought retail, for peace of mind and to avoid the cherry-picking rejects syndrome that another poster mentioned (the vendor sorts out the overclockable CPUs) and always had good luck. For my most recent slot A class Athlons, I thought the cpu fan was kinda noisy, and replaced it (simple unscrewing job, leave the heatsink on).

I've seen the T-Bird 1000 retail recently at Computer Builders Warehouse (forgot the url, think its www.cbw.com)for $185 (plus s/h) versus the OEM for $175 (plus s/h). Don't know anything about this vendor but its resellerratings.com rating is respectible. I do note in the fine print on their webpage that they don't take returns of CPUs-what's with that??

Personally I'm probably going to hold off for a few weeks more as new CPUs and motherboard chipsets are right around the corner.