What turned me off to the vast majority of oem hardware was that it was far too gimped and the poor build quality of some is legendary like shitty power supplies ect. I also despise that many oems still install shit tons of bloatware and even in some extreme cases spy ware. Lack of bios options is absurd even basic monitoring for temps and voltages ect that could have been used for quick troubleshooting.

I prefer diy builds as they are often more interesting and sometimes contain some very good parts that become rare years later.

chinny22 wrote:

OEM's are often criticised about their lack of BIOS options. I'll admit sometimes they seem to go a bit far, but again it comes […]
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OEM's are often criticised about their lack of BIOS options.
I'll admit sometimes they seem to go a bit far, but again it comes to reliability. Overclocking, memory timings, these things affect reliability and that's what you are paying for with an OEM.

OEM's are not perfect, gimped hardware like soundcards, non standardised connectors for no good reason are the first 2 that come to mind.
I also find systems built for the workplace are far superior to their home market range

Different markets have different requirements.

For the HW enthusiast OEMs are a no-no mostly for the 2 reasons above but also because OEM charge more and also do not have latest GPU/CPU/etc. Point in case, look around and tell me how many OEMs RIGHT NOW have a KabyLake CPU in them? Almost everything you find is just Skylake.

For the office secretary, OEMs are great.

But the point that bothers me is really what you outlined: lack of BIOS options (I am looking at you COMPAQ and DELL) and non-standard connectors. Offering the option to overclock the memory does NOT make the PC unstable. That is a bullshit argument. Using that option might but you do not have to. They only remove that to ease their customer support services as it would be hard to help someone over the phone through 1000 BIOS options. But that does NOT make the PC more stable. And non-standard connectors are there to make sure you buy from the OEM the parts you need and not go get yourself what you want.

IBM was the first to sin with this. Try to find a decent MCA sound card...or a custom video card...or a network card...

OEM is awesome. Usually works 100%. Very well documented. Turn on & play. 🤣

Vintage OEM is usually really cheap compared to vintage custom. 😀

I have not owned an OEM PC in 15+ years. 😎

At first I thought OEMs were shitty, because of all the proprietary stuff, and this remained partially true.

But some of the parts of those shitty systems were actually quite solid, many used Intel motherboards of solid build quality (but without solid overclocker options..something not everyone cares about that much, including me).

Many boards are somewhat indistinguishable from retail boards, except when it comes to drivers or any particular board suddenly missing some key tweaking features in the BIOS.

And one advantage some OEM boards have or had, was the ability to install an OEM WinXP and it would be pre-activated (build a few Fujitsu Siemens rigs that way, could even slipstream the OEM media 😁).

So imo it adds an extra dimension to retro computing and though much of it may be bad, to me it will in the end actually add new ind possibly interesting stuff that requires people to become a bit more creative.

My dislike of OEMs is mainly due to 3 things:

1. On current machines, the ridiculous amounts of bloatware/malware that comes pre-installed is extremely irritating. For my work I use a Dell laptop that has good specs but with all the crap it has its performance is greatly affected, when I start up local app servers during development it slows down to a crawl and becomes unusable. 😠

The worst thing about it is that due to my employer's policies I cannot install my own clean OS, so the only thing I can do is to ask the helpdesk guys for a "clean install", but all they do in that case is just slapping a pre-installed image with all the bloatware junk included. I have tried to remove this stuff manually but half of this crap does not even appear in the Programs/Features section of the control panel, the hard drive of this machine is a cesspool. I cannot be bothered spending time getting rid of all this shit. 😠

2. On retro machines, the use of non standard components and connectors "just because". I mean, I can understand using a custom component if it gives you some kind of advantage, but if there is a standard and it works well, I feel insulted by this "need" of locking the customer to buying only a specific replacement part. I know that's part of their business, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

3. This one is not an important thing, it's mostly a joke, but I despise the OEM boot splash screens, in particular Gateway. Don't ask me why, it's just an irrational thing from my part 😁

TheMobRules wrote:

1. On current machines, the ridiculous amounts of bloatware/malware that comes pre-installed is extremely irritating. For my work I use a Dell laptop that has good specs but with all the crap it has its performance is greatly affected, when I start up local app servers during development it slows down to a crawl and becomes unusable. 😠

I recently bought a new Dell Precision 5510 laptop. What I did first: wiped the SSD and installed Windows 10 from scratch (not an OEM version of course). Then I had to replace SSD driver to get rid of constant BSODs related to NVMe, and since then I have no problems.

No matter what laptop I acquire, first thing I do is wipe everything and install a fresh non-OEM version of Windows. Thus, bloatware problem goes away - at the cost of time and some efforts, but nonetheless.

bristlehog wrote:

TheMobRules wrote:

No matter what laptop I acquire, first thing I do is wipe everything and install a fresh non-OEM version of Windows. Thus, bloatware problem goes away - at the cost of time and some efforts, but nonetheless.

May I ask why a non-OEM version? I though OEM version is what you get if you buy Windows from Amazon or Newegg?

Lack of of is why I avoid , that and at the high end they cost 50% more than a custom

There were some name brand computers that actually had the BIOS on the hard drive.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r6372762-Need … lp-w-an-old-486

Planned obsolescence is the only reason I can think of for doing something like that.

For retro OEM machines, it was always the lack of a VLB slot on 486 machines and usually an AGP slot on PII class machines. Other cost cutting like not having any L2 cache on board (and no where to install any!) come to mind. That and very limited BIOS configurations.

Oh and the BIOS isn't stored on the HD of those old Compaqs, just the CMOS setup program. Its in a diagnostic partition and can easily be reinstalled with a download from HP's site.

Once I built my first system, it started a chain of upgrade events that made it cheaper to keep building, then to start from scratch with an OEM system. Plus, I knew exactly what I was putting into my machine. I knew the BIOS wouldn't be stripped. I picked the exact HDD model I wanted. That sort of thing.

Sure, there were good OEM builds, but there were enough bad ones (eMachines anyone?) to give the whole lot a bad rep in the tech community.

I had a little pizzabox micro-ATX OEM system that looked really nice, but was slow and out of date. I tried upgrading it, but adding a bigger hard drive, more memory and faster CPU caused it to overheat and malfunction, and there was no way of adding additional fans to the case. I had to throw it out, which was a shame.

There are very decent OEM machines (especially older servers and workstations) I prefer over custom builds. High end Compaq, Gateway2000, HP machines were nice, low end Packard Bells were junk.

OEM builds are cool curiosities, but not very interesting beyond the surface. Custom builds might be associated with endless troubleshooting, but OEM's are guilty of non-standard parts and connections that limit repairs and upgrades.

It depends, the xw4600 motherboard I have is probably one of the best examples of the advantages and disadvantages of OEM (The other is the Gateway 2000 box, which has the advantage of using only one fan in the PSU to cool everything).

On the bright side :

Supports most Core2 processors
DDR2 ECC, up to 16GB!
PCI-e 2.x
All legacy ports including parallel, serial, PS/2.

Downside :

'supports VT-d' but the BIOS is broken, so it doesn't work
If used in a third party case, pauses on bootup because a thermal sensor isn't in place
Only works with a very restricted number of PSUs, probably related to power on response time.

And what kind of issues are yall getting with custom builds, mine all just work.

chinny22 wrote:

OEM PC's seem to bring out a hatred in people I never really understood.

I suppose you could say there are two types of OEM PCs': good ones and bad ones.
I've had a few good ones, for example, I had a Commodore 386SX-16. It had a custom motherboard and a slimline case:

The custom motherboard made it very compact and feature-rich: it had EMS support in the chipset, HDD controller, floppy, printer, serial port etc were all integrated on the motherboard, so unlike most clones of the time, I did not require any expansion card for basic functionality.
The video card was a regular ISA card, so it could be easily replaced/upgraded if required. However, they put in a Paradise SVGA card, which was one of the best on the market at the time, so there was no need.
They also used a standard PSU, and reasonably standard drive bays, so adding harddrives, floppy drives or a CD-ROM drive was not a problem.

Then there's the bad OEMs:
They would have a custom PSU which is underpowered, some motherboard with crappy hardware integrated, that you can't bypass, lack of upgrade options because they have a weird custom case design where not all expansion cards, harddrives etc will fit.
That sort of thing.

candle_86 wrote:

And what kind of issues are yall getting with custom builds, mine all just work.

On some occasions I had motherboards that just wouldn't work properly.
Eg, for my Athlon Thunderbird 1400, I initially had an Abit KT7 Turbo board. But it just wouldn't run stable, no matter what I tried. I returned it two times, the third time the shop offered to swap it for a different brand/model with comparable features. That was an MSI K7T Turbo. It worked like a charm from day 1, and still does.

I also have some issues with an Asus KT266A board. It will run for a few hours, and then just lock up. I have no idea why. It's always done that. I've had it for years, and over time I've swapped memory, CPU, PSU, videocard and whatnot, and obviously it's had its share of OS reinstalls/upgrades and drivers etc, but nothing ever solved it. I guess the motherboard itself just has a weird bug.

I've also had some other issues with other builds, but they were usually relatively minor, and I eventually found a solution or workaround (eg, I once built a 486 system with a friend of mine, with some board that had both PCI and VLB slots. We found that the VLB could only be used if you didn't use any ISA cards, or vice versa). The above are just two rare instances where there seemed to be no way to fix it. Either way, it can be very frustrating if things don't work properly.

Scali wrote:

On some occasions I had motherboards that just wouldn't work properly. Eg, for my Athlon Thunderbird 1400, I initially had an Ab […]
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candle_86 wrote:

And what kind of issues are yall getting with custom builds, mine all just work.

On some occasions I had motherboards that just wouldn't work properly.
Eg, for my Athlon Thunderbird 1400, I initially had an Abit KT7 Turbo board. But it just wouldn't run stable, no matter what I tried. I returned it two times, the third time the shop offered to swap it for a different brand/model with comparable features. That was an MSI K7T Turbo. It worked like a charm from day 1, and still does.

I also have some issues with an Asus KT266A board. It will run for a few hours, and then just lock up. I have no idea why. It's always done that. I've had it for years, and over time I've swapped memory, CPU, PSU, videocard and whatnot, and obviously it's had its share of OS reinstalls/upgrades and drivers etc, but nothing ever solved it. I guess the motherboard itself just has a weird bug.

I've also had some other issues with other builds, but they were usually relatively minor, and I eventually found a solution or workaround (eg, I once built a 486 system with a friend of mine, with some board that had both PCI and VLB slots. We found that the VLB could only be used if you didn't use any ISA cards, or vice versa). The above are just two rare instances where there seemed to be no way to fix it. Either way, it can be very frustrating if things don't work properly.

As I work in a large enviroment what your describing isn't just from customs, I've seen my fair share of Dells/HP's/Lenovos with the same kind of problems, matter of fact we have an Optiplex 9020 that no matter what couldn't be repaired, we tried mobo, psu, ram, cpu, hard drive, opticial nothing made it work, we sent it back to dell for a replacement