Tguyus opened this issue on Feb 27, 2007 · 43 posts
pjz99 posted Wed, 28 February 2007 at 8:43 AM
IMO no products "need" to be retail except the motherboard, as you noted, for included connectors and cables. It only really affects price, you still have the manufacturer's warranty. The manuals for various things are all junk that will sit in a bottom drawer somewhere, if you don't actually throw them away (I do).
The difference in price between OEM and retail can be quite large, although in your case it looks like the various bits are within $20 of each other.
According to Louguet here there is an almost insignificant difference (1-2%) in render speeds when using different speeds of memory. You can save quite a bit of money by going with 667MHz memory:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231112
800MHz, $399
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231110
667MHz, $369
I bought the 2x2GB 800MHz G.Skill memory and it works fine with my ASUS P5WDH Deluxe motherboard, so I'd expect it would work fine in yours, although in my case the motherboard won't actually run it at 800MHz, it slows it down to 533MHz (meaning you're likely just as well off buying the slower mem and saving 30 bucks).