Retail/Boxed Athlon XP 1800+ Processor question

[Bronko]

I ordered a Retail/Boxed Athlon XP processor, along with a Shuttle AK31 from newegg.com last week. How do the retail Athlons compare to their OEM counterparts in regards to overclocking? How is the HSF that comes with it? It is not a must that I be able to overclock, but if I can, why not?

 

[Rainsford]

As far as I know, retail and OEM processors are equal in terms of overclocking. The difference is that OEM does not come (at least most of the time) with a heatsink and has a shorter warrenty. The retail processors come with heatsinks that are average. You might be able to overclock a little, but I'd buy a performance heatsink for serious overclocking. That's why I get all OEM CPUs, I buy my own heatsinks anyways.

 

[DarkMajiq]

The processors are the same, there's no Retail/OEM difference. How well your processor overclocks depends solely on the processor, motherboard, RAM, and heatsink, but not whether it came in a box or not. The HSFs that come with the retail processors are adequate, and may allow you to do a little overclocking, but if you really want to crank that baby up, you'll need to buy an aftermarket HSF with more cooling power.