OEM vs Retail what do you think

I have been hanging around on the forums for about a year now and I dont think I have ever seen a topic on OEM vs Retail.

I buy most of my stuff Retail, Video Cards, Software and such, but recently I got my Logitech Elite Wireless Keyboard and Mouse as an OEM, and I have bought a few MS Wireless Desktops OEM.

So whats the deal it seems to be the same product, just without all the flashy packaging. When I bought my Video card Retial it came with a huge software bundle 8 cds of games and such. I think I tried them all once and tossed em into my "Oddball CD Pile" (Come on everybody has got to have a place to put those CD's that are good enough to save, but not worth enough to keep with your Good CD's)

But Back to Topic

Is there any good reason to buy retail or am I just blowing my money most of the time.

in some cases, such as on CPUs, the manufacturer's warranty is better when you buy retail rather than OEM. Also the retail versions of things come with all the accessories, such as an S-Video cable or a power supply splitter that would come with a retail vid card but not OEM.

Well I guess it is just going to boil down to a purchase on purchase descsion.

OEM. Why pay more for a warranty your just gona void within in an hour of recieving it?

I buy retail most every time. I like to have the longer warranties and the extras that come with them.

Why pay more for a warranty your just gona void hehe, i like that, might just have to put that in my quote

Not only will I void the warrranty on my CPU, but within a few months I'll probably replace it anyway.

If I overclock a video card to death, I'll eat that.

And especially with a CPU, I've never known them to just die. It can and does happen, but fairly rarely. If it starts out ok, then you're generally going to be ok.

All of my CPU deaths have been due to a defective operator. No warranty covers that.

I may be seeing ghosts, but ...

I have noticed better AMD CPU steppings when purchased OEM vs. retail. Dramatically better.

Well I think I stand by my word that I am going to buy stuff on a case by case basis. Video cards will almost always be Retail but Hard Drives and ram will more than lickly be OEM.

Yep, CD drives and the like can also be bought OEM, I have retail video card as well. Quite often processors come with fans and heatsink retail as well, but you will often want to replace them anyways. But if you aren't going to replace them, they might as well be bought retail cause they are quite often good deals.