Do OEM processors not clock as well as retail ? Just a hunch as in the past had two OEM Q6600's and a retail one and they were all G0 going into three systems with the same board and only one was willing to clock up to 3.5 !

OEM's should be the same as retails (except they only have a 1 year warranty).

The only exception to this rule generally is OEM's from Overclockers as they cherry pick good overclocking CPU's from retail then sell the dud overclockers as OEM's.

Well that would explain EXACTLY my previous situation. They had 3 Q6600's left and I was knocking up a system for myself, one for my father and one for my bro in law. All boards were Abit IP-35 Pro. The retail one I kept for myself (as you do), the thing clocked up to 3.3 on stock volts and romped on to 3.6 easy. The other two, both G0's but they were sold as 'OEM' and came in little black cardboard boxes, one wouldn't go past 3.2 and was trying to meltdown in the process, the other hit 3.35 but also was as stable as a table with two legs.

So where is a good (cheap) place to get bits from, Overclock.co.uk (not overclockers) seem to be cheap for boards but more for memory, OVerclockers seem to have the cheapest memory. I can get to Scan too, but they seem to be more procey for memory.

Scan are always good, I've used them for the last few orders & they don't mess around with returns, ebuyer are fine (but don't always have all the bits you want).

I generally find everywhere works out the same price give or take a pound or so but it balances out over the entire order.

Retail ones come in a fancy box with a sticker and a stock heatsink...the OEM ones come in a plain brown box and probably no heatsink...

OEM have no heatsink & a 1 year warranty instead of 3 years for retail

I now have in my possession an Asus P6T Se, was told the only difference between this and the none SE was SLI and the phase power was the same....but either way it gets good reviews and it has more ram slots than the similarly priced Gigabyte. Also have a retail i7920 and a new PSU an Enermax 625w job. The Corsair one I have is too fond of whining, at first I thought it was my vid card but it wasn't.

Now all I need to do is save up for some ram....a bit like the guy who sold his TV to buy a VHS player.