Reasons not to buy OEM CPUs?

[walkure]

I'm planning on building a new system very soon (actually have been reading this site and many others daily for the past month, and now am REALLY itching to get this thing going) and am wondering about the CPU.

I want the 3500+ Winchester (90nm). The rock-bottom price that I can find is $251 at Monarch for the OEM version. I realize that I need to buy a separate heatsink/fan for use with this. That's fine, as the test results I have read on various sites show that stock heatsinks get outperformed by say the Thermalright that I'd like.

As for a retail version of the 3500+, Monarch has it, but for a whopping $329. FuturePowerPC has it for $289, that is, if they get it in next Monday. ZZF is currently out of stock ($299 list price).

I'm just wondering if there is any reason to be worried about buying the OEM version from Monarch. I could even pay them $15 for a 3 year warranty, which doesn't sound too bad (still end up at only $266 for the thing). Of course yes then I still have to buy the nice heatsink, but I was planning on doing that if I got the retail one anyway.


This will be placed on either the Asus or Gigabyte SLI board, btw... any thoughts?

Thanks much.

 

[SrGuapo]

Th OEM CPU is the same as a retail one. If it is that much cheaper, I would definately get the OEM, especially with the monarch warranty. You will also need to buy some thermal compound (Artic silver 5 seems to be recommended the most) for the CPU.

 

[Byers]

Are you firm about getting the winchester core and not newcastle?

 

[ts3433]

If you plan to overclock anyway, get a 3200+. All three Winchesters will top out at about the same speeds. If not, get the Newcastle, which is often much cheaper.

 

[coejus]

The main thing is the heatsink/fan (a non-OEM HSF is going to increase the cost of the OEM processor considerably) and the warranty. Other than that... not really.

 

[walkure]

Originally posted by: ts3433
If you plan to overclock anyway, get a 3200+. All three Winchesters will top out at about the same speeds. If not, get the Newcastle, which is often much cheaper.

I definitely plan to at least moderately overclock (though I'm pretty sure I'll up the ante once I get more experience). If one can squeeze more performance out and still have a stable system, why not? That being said, I definitely plan to keep my components for AT LEAST a year, and probably longer, so I'd rather buy the higher GHz model vs. the lower one. In any case, the 3200+ can be found for about $199 I think. Perhaps ~$50 savings.

Yes, I want the Winchester. I've read a few Newcastle vs. Winchester articles and it doesn't seem like the Winnie has any HUGE advantages, but often slightly lower temps and slightly higher speeds.

BTW, I was reading one of the Asus A8N SLI threads in the mobo's section, and GuitarDaddy posted something about how 3000+ or 3200+ owners might run into some problem, while 3500+ owners would not. I think it had to do with the multiplier? I'm really not sure. If that makes any sense, I will try to find the post.

EDIT: He was talking about memory dividers. He originally thought the board did not have manual dividers, but later discovered that they were there, just hidden / labeled oddly and not documented. Apparently this nullifies the concern I mentioned above.

Thanks.

 

[ts3433]

FYI, a 3200+ can often make the small 200MHz jump to 3500+ speeds without a bump in VCore (this is really the only thing that shortens a CPU's life cycle, not necessarily overclocking in itself). You can probably get almost 2.7GHz (2.655) with just 1.55V. This is about where they've all topped out on air cooling anyway.

 

[walkure]

Edit: I've been staring at the screen for too long. I posted that they changed their price from $329 to $269 for retail 3500+, but of course the $269 is the Newcastle, and the $329 Winchester is also out of stock until 1/15. Looks like I'll probably be going OEM for $251.

 

[meltdown75]

if you are into building then OEM is the way to go. it gives you the added excitement of choosing your own heatsink/fan setup. there are some pretty fancy shmancy cooling setups out there and many reasons why you should buy OEM instead of retail. retail heatsinks are puke. for $20 you can have something like i picked up which makes the guts of my rig look fun & exciting. :laugh: lol

 

[Edward Lee]

Originally posted by: coejus
The main thing is the heatsink/fan (a non-OEM HSF is going to increase the cost of the OEM processor considerably) and the warranty. Other than that... not really.

Like he said,
You don't get as good of a warranty you would with a retail CPU and You don't get a heat sink and fan, So it'll probably be more expensive in the end if you don't have your own HSF already.

 

[PingSpike]

OEM is the way to go since most retail heatsinks are crap and use a thermal pad which makes for some pretty crappy overall performance.

Technically the retail cpu's warrenty is void if you don't use the provided heatsink and thermal pad, although I'm sure if you just stuck the retail sink in the box along with the cpu when you returned it you would be fine.

I believe it was either monarch or mwave (I'm pretty sure mwave) that offered a full 1 year warrenty on its OEM cpus for about $3 extra. I just came across that recently, but given mwave's good rep that is the way to go IMO. Buy OEM, buy a good aftermarket heatsink, buy some AS creamique and the $3 warrenty and you'll have all the perks of the retail AND OEM chips for about the same cost. (Depends on if you're looking for an overclocking sink, those can cost a lot....course thats gonna void the warrenty anyway.)

You'll have to RMA the cpu to mwave instead of AMD/Intel of course if it fails. In my experience CPUs almost never fail if they aren't DOA, and if they do its always well after the 1 year warrenty has expired. So I've had no qualms about buying OEM cpus anyway. However, $3 is practically nothing so why the hell not?

 

[Pandamonium]

Retail boxed CPUs, IMO, are mostly preferred for the warranty. The HSF is secondary, since most of us probably use aftermarket coolers anyway.

 

[Jiggz]

There's no reason not to buy OEM CPU's! Unless you have money burning in your pocket or you don't know what you're doing. With the added warranty at such a small price, it makes it even better to buy OEM. Just like most of the AT'ers say, we always look for aftermarket coolers anyway!

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: walkure
Reasons not to buy OEM CPUs?

Yes

 

[LoneWolf15]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
OEM is the way to go since most retail heatsinks are crap and use a thermal pad which makes for some pretty crappy overall performance.

The Athlon 64's retail heatsink is actually pretty darned good. And, instead of a pad, it has pre-applied thermal transfer compound that works so well it's almost thermal epoxy. When replacing my retail heatsink/fan this week with a Swiftech, it actually pulled the CPU from the locked CPU socket on the mainboard.

The only thing about the retail heatsink is that its fan is probably a bit louder. Still, it locks down solid, and it worked well for me. I've actually had higher temps with my Swiftech, so I'm going to have to take it off and re-mount it this week.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

sounds like OEM is right for you

i prefer retail for the warranty and included hsf fan. im not into overclocking, so no issues finding 3rd party cooling. its just the simplest solution for me. but if you want to oc and arent goign to use the stock cooling, i dont see why not go OEM. there are no quality issues as far as im concerned.

 

[walkure]

Since OC'ing voids the warranty, would it be a waste to even pay Monarch the $15 for the 3 year warranty? That is... if the CPU was somehow damaged by an extreme overclock, would they be able to tell and not refund/replace?

 

[bigpow]

Go with OEM, unless if the Retail Boxed CPU is only a few $ more than OEM

 

[Rip the Jacker]

Warranty..

 

[Porter21]

I bought OEM 2500 mobile athlon xp from newegg. worked good so far.

 

[Oyeve]

Sorry for the slighly OT remark, but what are the actual cost dif between oem and retail?

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: walkure
Since OC'ing voids the warranty, would it be a waste to even pay Monarch the $15 for the 3 year warranty? That is... if the CPU was somehow damaged by an extreme overclock, would they be able to tell and not refund/replace?

Check there warrenty statement. Overclocking definately voids AMD/Intels warrenty, but maybe they are different.

To answer the second question, they might be able to tell and they certainly would be in their rights to not refund if that is their policy. In reality...they most likely would not be able too unless you did something really dumb.

And countrary to what a lot of people seem to think, unless you're pumping outragous voltages through your chip (voltages that most motherboards don't even support without vmodding) its pretty unlikely your chip is just suddenly going to up and die. Higher voltage and to a lesser extent higher clock speeds reduce the lifespan of a cpu, but cpus are usually completely and totally obsolete before they reach that point anyway. I've got a lot of crappy ass systems at work that are perpetually in a state of breaking/failing. And I don't think one of them as ever had a bad cpu. CPUs, in my experience are either DOA or keep on trucking. As long as you put your heatsink on right and are careful with them, I think most current cpus are pretty resilent.

 

[flexy]

hi,
i have a relayted question. I bought two OEM A64 3500+ from monarch.
ONE of the chips i purchased the 20 day warranty which already expired - the second CPU i bought the monarch 6 months warranty.

Stupid question - but is the warranty specifically tied to a specific processor s/n ? The invoice doesnt show anything, it just lists the CPU w/o serial and the warranty but no serial number etc. for the warranty.

What happens *in case* the first CPU (with the expired warranty) WOULD turn out defective ? I probably couldnt use the warranty i bought with the other CPU for *this* CPU, couldn't i ? It just sucks kowing you spend $315 and the warranty is expired for one of the CPUs, and i didnt even have a chance to test the CPUs since i am still waiting for my motherboard.

 

[walkure]

flexy, just wondering, why did you buy 2? 2 systems going?

Anyway, I really don't know the answer to your question... It seems you paid the $9 for the 6 month warranty. I would have just paid $15 for a whole 3 years (6 times as long for only 1.66 times as much money). But that is in the past. Let's just hope your CPU's "keep on truckin" as mentioned in the post before yours.