Hi
are you talking about AMD or Intel or both?
are you talking about large internet retailers who stock retail boxed and OEM cpu's?
It is strange because retail boxed cpu includes heatsink & fan + Intel guarantee
can you give us some examples?
If looking at web sites from different EU countries you have to check if VAT (TAX) is included and at what rate
and also look at delivery charges which can distort the price
(a oem cpu would need better packaging than a retail box cpu)
I Googled for a cheap i3 and found the i3 4160 retail boxes for £88 to £90 including 20% VAT (in UK)
and some prices for oem 4160T (low power version) were much higher (£98)
There was one OEM 4160 but out of stock at £94
personally I would get a retail boxed cpu even if I was not intending to use the heatsink/fan
The only time I ever bought a damaged cpu was when I bought a oem AMD Athlon which had its level 2 cache zapped by static. I wasted a long time trying to find out why I could not install Windows, and eventually got it to run stably but very slowly by disabling L2 cache in the bios
regards
Mike Barnes