If you ever RMA an Intel processor...

[Ygor]

Mine died on Thanksgiving. Apparently every time a processor freezes up, its temperature goes up. One too many resets and something inside shorts. Mayhaps this is also why I couldn't even get "turbo" speed to work without loads of errors?

Anyway, you must stay on top of Intel. I waited to hear from the place I bought mine from to contact Intel & deal directly with them. By this time it was almost December 1st...
Since I had no fax number when I called Intel, they had to send my RMA # by us snail.It finally left here on the 6th and arrived in Oregon on the 14th.
I called today & their RMA dept has recognized its arrival... Now we're on the fast track, shipping should get one out in 3 or 4 days!
Then another week to arrive here...
I'm beginning to wonder if OEM isn't a better deal?

[jadinolf]

I don't think you'd be happy with a defective OEM CPU which has little or no warranty.

[flagreen]

Stick with the Boxed cpus. The little money you save with OEMs isn't worth the shorter warranty. Besides by the time you buy a decent fan/heatsink for an OEM P-lll you've spent more than you saved to begin with. I bought an OEM P-lll but wont make that mistake again! Have fun.

[KillerBug]

Buy OEM! Get a good heatsink from the start, Intel ones suck!

[bkehoe]

I'd never buy retail. The Intel Heatsinks are USELESS.

I got a retail P!!! 500 a while back, and guess what size the heatsink was on it?!!? You're wrong! It is the same heatsink as what came on the Celeron 300As.

Now, you'd have to be out of your mind to say that that little heatsink is OK for a 500MHz retail processor.

Even overclocking it to 515MHz would bring crashes and lockups. Obtained a 'normal' heatsink and it is now running happily at 560MHz. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Brendan

[Ygor]

I'll probably stick with retail, just wanted to let others know what's involved if you use the warranty.

Several reviewers have said in the past that the stock Intel fans & sinks aren't bad, even for mild overclocking.

If the replacement won't take "turbo" speed, I'm going to get serious about a P3-500.