OEM or Boxed CPU

[ddka]

I an going to buy a new Athlon CPU, an XP3000+

the OEM is $128 + i can get a 1 year warranty fo $10 more = $138

The retail boxed is $ 168

if I already have a heatsink & fan, is there any real reason to pay the extra to get the boxed ?? I don't plan on overclocking & I figured if it doesn't die by a year its ok?? or am I missing something

Can anyone shed some light on this dilema ???

Thanks in advance for the help

[bombledmonk]

Go ahead and get OEM. Getting Boxed will get you the retail heatsink and a 3 year warranty, but if you are going to put your heatsink on you will void it anyways.

[ddka]

The heatsink is on the AMD approved list, so that is not an issue

[bombledmonk]

Maybe it has changed, but when I bought my 2500+ a long time ago the papers said that anything other than the supplied heatsink and thermal pad would void the warranty. Even using a thermal paste like Arctic Silver 3 would void it.

[ddka]

yes, any paste will void AMD warranty.AMD only accepts thermal pad..the heatsink I will use has thermal pad. AMD insists use of pad beacuse it cushions the core

[johnnyis42]

most of the things about what voids your retail processor's warrenty came about int he last few years, and mostly came about from people not knowing what they were doing and breaking their processor somehow.

the warrenty is there to protect you, the consumer, from being gyped out of the money you paied for a part that died because of a manufacturing defect.

soo, if you plan on doing anything other than plugging your processor in to the board then the heat sinc on top of that and never touching the processor settings in the BIOS, them the warrenty is worth something to you/

as for the pad protecting the core..... yeah, i guess that's possible, but last i heard AMD had a big problem with the metallic mixture thermal pastes, because there was enough conductivity in some of them that they shorted out some of the exposed contacts on the top of the athlon xp's packaging. i'm not surprised they went to a "no paste" policy, after some of the things i have seen people do to their processors trying to install them themselves. the truth is that if you are not careful, even with a thermal pad, you could crack the core when you rock the heat sink around on the delicate core.

quite frankly, the biggest problem i have ever seen with AMD processors is when the heat sinc clips are not 100% secure to the socket, and over time it pops loose while the computer is running and the processor is dead in a fraction of a second. AMD does not cover that type of damage in their warrenty.

[gooey_gui]

Keep in mind that OEM warranties will also exclude coverage in cases where the chip is burned, chipped or cracked. They usually state this, under the terms of such, on their website.

[charlielx]

Hi, i want to put My 2 cents in, If you buy OEM and have a problem you have to take it back or talk to the People you purchased it from, If you pay the defferance and get the "Boxed" You can go to AMD with Your problem, and I think you get a longer warranty. I would Get the boxed one . Good luck

[Trophy1]

Originally posted by ddka
yes, any paste will void AMD warranty.AMD only accepts thermal pad..the heatsink I will use has thermal pad. AMD insists use of pad beacuse it cushions the core

How do they know if one has used paste?

[johnnyis42]

simply put, they look at the chip and see if there is residue of the paste on it. arctic silver and the white pastes residue all look considerably different from the residue left behind from thermal pads. if you wanted to get rid of any evidence you could thoroughly clean the chip with alcohol, but i'm guessing that there still are people out there who fail to realize this and get told they voided their warrenty.

which is funny, because all the popular enthusiest sites use thermal paste for their testing, and AMD actually sends them engineering products to test and never come out and condone this practice.