Retail or OEM

[dsquare]

Hello everyone,

I plan to assemble my own computer system around an Athlon 64-3200+, Asus motherboard and geForce-6800GT video card.
Regarding the MOTHERBOARD and HARD DRIVE, do I buy the retail packages or the OEM version? Yes I would like to save some money. Do the OEM packages have the drivers on CD and other required stuffs? I will built my system from scratch with no other stuffs from my old system.

 

[Rugger]

The OEM will typically have a shorter warranty period and only warranty thru the mfr. OEM should contain a driver CD, but may not have much more. You'll have to ask the store you are purchasing what comes with the purchase. Newegg makes it easy - they provide a good list and pictures of the equipment for almost all of their products. I bought an OEM HDD and it didn't some with cables. I knew this and bought a retail mobo that had them.

Since you are building from scratch, you need to put together a detailed list of components before you make any purchases. Bounce the list against what will be included in your purchases to make sure you are getting everything you need. Sometimes it's worth the extra cost to get a retail component because of the extras that are included. If you've never built a PC before, then I highly recommend you read Tom's How-to on building a PC. The links is here:
<A HREF="http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20020904/index.html" target="_new">http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20020904/index.html</A>
This article has a 2 parts and there is a link to the second part on the last page.

"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones

 

[sobelizard]

As a general rule - mbs retail, hd's oem.

<font color=green><b><i>Lizards</font color=green></b> do <b>not</b> taste like <b><font color=yellow>chicken</font color=yellow></b>,<b> <font color=yellow>chicken</font color=yellow></b> tastes like <font color=green><b>lizard.</b></font color=green></i>

 

[Worf101]

In my last build I went OEM for the chip and drives. Everything else came with a retail box. Retail Mobo's give you a lot of stuff you might need like cables and software..

Da Worfster

If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.