OEM or Retail?

[jmatt]

I'm going to be building a new PC for the first time soon and I was wondering what the difference is between purchasing an OEM CPU versus a retail model.

In addition if anyone has suggestions on which motherboard to select for an Athlon 1800+, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks.

 

[btvillarin]

OEM doesn't come in a fancy box, while Retail packages do. Other than that, no difference. As for a motherboard, I don't really know what to tell you. I haven't been able to check out stuff, since my computer's been out of commission (I'm at school right now... :lol: )

Don't pay any attention to my chickenscratch.

 

[DaveGOD]

OEM stands for something like Original Equipment Maker, its intended for system builders, as opposed to retail version which is marketed towards home users as an upgrade. As he said, this usually means you just get the peice of hardware, no fancy box or (especially for graphics cards) no extras like a 'free' game. bear in mind that sometimes OEM comes with the driver CD/disk (and manual!), sometimes not, so you might have to DL them and have them on floppy or burn onto CD. for a CPU though, no point at all getting retail.

for a mobo look for KT266A or AMD760/1 chipsets, if you want to be told a specific board you need to say what you want to do with your comp (games?), and most importantly any specific features you want (raid etc) and so on...

personally im going for a Gigabyte GA-7VTXH, a quite cheap KT266A board, if youve got the cash the Asus KG7-Raid is a nice AMD761 board with Raid. There seems to be a lot of appreciation for a Shuttle board on these forums too, look around

I suggest you take a look at mobo manufacturers sites and take a look at their newer boards using the above chipsets, see if the board has what you need. I'd suggest going for a more well known brand like MSI, Asus, Abit, Gigabyte... and take a look at their website to see how much info they give, tech support etc.

can you tell im bored lol

Yossarian lives

 

[HarleyMYK]

In the case of Athlon CPUs (which is what I think you are asking about) the Retail version comes with the AMD heatsink-fan unit and a three year warrantee. The OEM version has no fan and heatsink, so you need to buy one. The warrantee is also much shorter (1 year?? not sure). The AMD heatsink fan is absolutely sufficient, but not great for overclocking. If you are not planning to overclock, I would say get the retail unit. The fan and extra warrantee make it a pretty good deal - $14 extra at Newegg.

PS. Think about the 1600+ and saving $85. You probably won't notice the difference, unless you have a good stopwatch.

Old enough to remember when sex was safe and a personal computer was a slide rule

 

[CoOLMaNX]

OEM=cheaper (should work, i believe you get either no warranty or a 1 year warranty)
Retail=more $$$ (better work, longer warranty?)