OEM, Retail?

[The Terminator]

I was on newegg, looking around and noticed the same products for different prices. One retail, one OEM. Whats the difference? Ones more expensive, but is there any difference?

 

[hyenolie]

retail means u get the fancy box, this means its pretty much buying from a store, u can be assured its good stuff, oem is just the hardware itself no box no manual, the reseller buys 200 at a time, stuffed in a box, and he sells em for cheaper. cus no money was spent by the manufacturer to rap the good ol presents up. u get the giff? just put the extra money into it, usualy 20 bucks extra and get the retail,plus its like opening a present =D, i like opening presents do you?

 

[dawdler]

Yeah, just the fancy box that's the difference... Personally, I prefer OEM. Cheaper is always cheaper

 

[Maxi]

But with some things... like audio cards or some keyboards you need the driver disks wich you sometimes don't get with the OEM stuff... so you should do your reserch before buying...

 

[hyenolie]

plus if u buy video cards now adays, dont u get like 4 full games. i dought they u get the games in oem version of the card.

 

[sonofagun]

Im not sure but I think with retail you get : box, manual, warranty and (shit)cooler

I'd say that was worth the extra!

 

[RABIES]

Use OEM only if the box is the difference, or if you need to replace a single part. But if software is included like for sound cards then you will most likely need Retail. OEM has come in handy for alot of people I know, when their hardware wore out and broke, it was off warranty, so they saved quite a bit by going OEM since they already had the software from the broken card...

 

[Emon]

Only get OEM if you aren't sacrificing anything important. Drivers are almost always not a problem, you can download drivers for just about any peice of hardware these days. Warrenty is really important. If OEM means you get no warrenty, like it does with AMD CPUs (I assume the same for Intel), then go retail for sure. Also, some retail video cards do get you quite a few games. Usually you get one good game at most, but some vendors of video and sound cards package really sweet shit. My Audigy 2 came with Hitman 2 and Soldier of Fortune II, for $100. That was a pretty sweet deal. If a retail video card is say, $250 and has a sweet software package, and the OEM is say $230, you'll probably want the retail, the extra money would be worth the software. Also, with CPUs, you get a stock heatsink, which is a lot easier than messing with another.

 

[qckbeam]

I bought my soundcard OEM and it didn't come with some of the cables I needed (which was a royal pain in the ass) leaving me with a sound card that didn't work for a week. I would really suggest buying one of the chepaer retail packages, as you never can be sure if you are going to get all you need with OEM.

 

[theneb]

Nearly all my hardware I buy OEM, the law states that you must be building a new computer to use OEM but most people don't check on this.

 

[hyenolie]

roflmao, who the **** listens to the law, who dosent pee in public 3 in the morning, tho dosent throw trash out hte window, who dosent carpool alone, dude cmon, **** laws like that

 

[RandomPING]

What states is that the law for? Any links on where i can find info on it?