OEM/Retail and hardware suggestions

[joepa99]

Hello all...

Planning to build a computer, and this will be first attempt. I was wondering if there are certain items that are worth paying the extra price to buy retail versions, and which items I should buy as OEMs.


My second question is this: I am building this system around the Asus A7N8X. I don't have the budget to buy all the top-end hardware to use with this board right now, so I want to know what would be the minimum hardware to put into this motherboard and still make it a functional system. I will be using this mainly for Internet and MS Office, with a small amount of gaming.

Thanks!

 

[joepa99]

one and only bump

 

[Ilmater]

I would go with the AMD retail processor. It comes with a longer warranty and a stock HSF that's fine for cooling.

All of the things you'll need in a working computer are:
Motherboard
CPU
Case (and power supply)
Video Card
Sound Card (included on that board)
Hard Drive
Optical Drive (will you need burning capabilities or DVD-ROM capabilities?)
Floppy (this isn't the necessity it once was)
Monitor
Mouse
RAM
Keyboard
Speakers?

If you're building a budget system, then why are you getting that motherboard? You have to realize that there are only four things to consider on motherboards: features, speed, stability and price. Asus definitely has stable boards, but you can get that elsewhere. The speed on that board is good, but not good enough to justify that kind of price (assuming from your post that you're on a budget). Motherboards don't usually mean much in the way of speed improvements. I'd either get a Chaintech 7VJL, which has all the features of this one like good on-board audio, LAN, and USB 2.0, and also comes with all the cables (rounded even!) you could need, along with a handy breakout box with USB and headphone/microphone jacks on it, or the Asus A7N266-VM which is an AMD Assured mobo (supposed to mean stability, but I don't know what it really means) that has on-board audio, LAN, and video, and USB 2.0. Go with the Chaintech if you want to use a seperate video solution and the Asus if you want integrated video.

 

[Coherence]

I don't have the budget to buy all the top-end hardware to use with this board right now...

Does that mean you do plan on replacing parts with top-end items later? If that's the case, then I'd say the mobo you chose is just fine. It's the one I'd most likely pick for my new system, if I were to build an AMD one today (but I'm waiting to see what is available when SATA drives and NV30 are out, then will decide between AMD or Intel).

Heck, since you don't do much gaming, you may as well use the on-board video, sound, and everything else, then disable them when you add your own top-end parts. This way, you'll start with a good budget system that can grow with you. Or, you may put in a good budget video card, in the mean time (like a ti4200).

No harm in investing a little extra on a good mobo now for future upgrades later, after all.

 

[Davegod]

what sort of games? 🙂 In terms of requirements, UT2003 / Doom 3 is a bit different to The Sims; on-board video will probably do you for the latter but really just wont cut it for the newer & arriving FPS's.

Regarding OEM, I usually buy OEM but have to watch. I've seen "OEM" video cards which only when you look closely do you see it's basically been underclocked, warranties also likely to be affected...

For CPU, a retail version has significantly longer warranty and comes with a heatsink for it. Not a great heatsink apparently but likely to be perfectly fine for you. For graphics cards, OEM is usually identical to retail but in plain packaging and missing a couple of games, which you may or may not be interested in. Watch though as I've seen some graphics cards that were described as OEM but were actually underclocked, cheaper versions. There's some thread around talking about OEM operating systems, in software forum I think, might be worth looking at (OEM XP certainly is a LOT cheaper). I cant actually think of anything else where there's OEM or retail, or at least where there's any real difference.