OEM CPU

[Fanatical Meat]

How does everyone feel about buying an OEM intel proc from ebay, its listed as new about a $60.00 savings.

 

[Slugbait]

That depends...is it an eBay store with tens of thousands of reviews at 98.4% positive over the last six months, or is it Joe Teenager with seven reviews at 85.2% positive over the last 12 months?

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Watch out it isn't an early engineering sample.

 

[jrichrds]

And more generally, it seems the lesser chips get relegated to OEM (like how many OEM E7200s were C0 stepping while all the retail-boxed E7200 were the better M0 stepping). Which, of course, isn't to say you can't find an OEM chip that overclocks way better than a retail-boxed.