Should have gotten the retail box. If your chip goes bad, you're hosed now.

 

thermalright has the best heatsinks (NOT thermaltake) as well as swiftech and zelaman (sp?). The zelmans would be quietest ones so I would reccomend that. try www.svc.com they usually have cheap heatsinks.

 

ive heard good things about zalman
plan on getting one of those

 

I havent purchased the cpu yet. Sorry if i made it seem like that. Does the ratail box come with a heatsink? if so then i guess it would be better just to use that right?

 

OEM box = CPU in a brown box
RETAIL box = CPU / heatsink / thermal paste / warrenty

and its usually $15-20 more than a OEM box.

 

I didnt know that. hehe. Last time i built my pc i bought the oem and it acme in a tiny lil thingy, and i bought the heatsink separately. i'll look into it then.

 

ive heard the retail included heatsink and fans are not that good

 

My OEM P4 retail fan/heatsink has been more than sufficent without overclocking. Spends all day around 37C and makes out around 43C during gaming and whatnot. My retail box came with everything except thermal paste (the heatsink has a thermal pad attached to the bottom).

I'm using a 19" NEC FE991 SB CRT and I'm happy with it. Colors are nice, I don't have to crank up the brightness so I'm happy. Runs everything at 1280x1024 at 85Hz without a problem.

 

Unless you are overclocking. You shouldn't even be asking this question. Ok. well I can think of one reason... quiet. Most of the time the stock hs/fan is pretty quiet. Unless you get it and find it's still too noisey for you... then you're just overly sensative. j/k, there are quieter ones.

Stock OEM fan/heatsink will be more than enough for cooling. Definatly do go with the retail box, having a warrenty is really nice.

 

yea not i gotta find a good monitor. I dont wanna go with a cheap generic brand that will crap out on me. I saw a few nec's an crt (if that is a brand) for around 150 shipped for some CTX brand. any good? or should i spend the extra cash and get a NEC or sony? any other good brands?


PS: another question i have is, ok last time i orderd all my stuff through newegg becasue it was my 1st time and just to save me a haedache. I had a problem with the chip and mobo and they delivered on the RMA promptly. Now i think i can probably find all the stuff cheaper by shopping at different sites so my question is should i just go with newegg again for everything? or shop around for a better price? any recommendations?