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Monarch Pre-tested good or bad?

M

Morphx2

Gawd
Joined
Aug 1, 2004
Messages
560
Well, I am about to purchase a A64 3000+ 939 retail and a Neo2 Platinum motherboard

Unfortunatly, Newegg doesnt have the retail processor, so I am looking at Monarch

Now they have both and it can be pre-tested and come already assembled with the processor on the motherboard. Is it better to get it like that or separetly? The only thing going for having them test it is that they give a free copy of FarCry, which I dont have.

So whatcha think I should do? Is Monarch a good place and good on RMAs if it goes bad?
 
I am not looking for you to answer there questions in the forum but instead to answer them to yourself to help decide what you should do.

(I would suggest you take the game out of the decision process, wont be of much added value if you are not happy with your computer. )

In order of importance:

How is your expertise in installing a HS/fan to a CPU ?
(if not high, stop right here and let them do it)

Will you get a better warranty if they do the work ?
(retail processors have a 3 year warrany from AMD and its almost unheard of to get one bad out of the box, in fact I have never seen it happen. Plenty of them have been blow up by a bad install, but I have never heard of a defective one out of the box, so we are kinda back to the first question.)

Will you overclock ? (if the answer is no the next two questions are not as important, but I do hate thermal pads, even the newer better ones).

Will Monarch install the HS/Fan with a thermal pad (yuck), pre applied grease (better) or artic silver (best) ?

Can you specify artic silver be used in the build ?
(if yes - do specify its use)

Do you or anyone you know have some artic silver 5 laying around? If no you must consider the cost and effort required to procure it for installing the heatsink yourself. (Buy it all over the web for $10 or less )

You will need to contact Monarch tech support for some of the questions.

There is a post in which someone is dealing with Monarch on another issue and the answer back from Monach on a technical issue was, in my opinion, stupid. This one incident should not be used as an overall judgement of their operation but I have nothing else solid to go on. I have heard they are pretty good but thats hearsay.
 
Morphx2 said:
Well, I am about to purchase a A64 3000+ 939 retail and a Neo2 Platinum motherboard

Unfortunatly, Newegg doesnt have the retail processor, so I am looking at Monarch
Click to expand...

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80699-2

Newegg, ZipZoomFly, or MonarchComputer are all three good places to order from. Just pick a place where its the cheapest.

I'm ordered an A64 3500+ and MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum today myself :).
 
I found Monarch to be cost competitive for buying vs. building a mobo/cpu combo when I factored the amount of time I would spend on building and testing and tax/shipping costs to California. Plus, now they have free shipping. I could have built for around $12 to $20 less, not worth it, especially when they will throw in Far Cry for free.
 
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