Jump to content

Windows activation key price

vujs
By vujs
in Windows
 Share
Posted

Hi, I am going to be building my pc in a few days and I was wondering about the Windows installation. I looked up the official prices and they were pretty expensive. I was wondering where everybody gets their activation key, because I have looked on ebay and it is about 3-5 euros but I've heard they do not give legit keys or something. So where would you guys advise to get activation keys?

Thanks in advance for any advice or replies!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
8 minutes ago, vujs said:

Hi, I am going to be building my pc in a few days and I was wondering about the Windows installation. I looked up the official prices and they were pretty expensive. I was wondering where everybody gets their activation key, because I have looked on ebay and it is about 3-5 euros but I've heard they do not give legit keys or something. So where would you guys advise to get activation keys?

Thanks in advance for any advice or replies!

IF I get a key, its $3 off ebay.  They are legit, but typically tied to 1 use.  People like to espouse that because someone has the ability to sell a key that price its not legit - their definition is that the seller hasn't obtained this for sale through Microsoft.  Likely its a PC building shop, or some such, who gets tons of keys for a reduced price and are selling some off instead of applying to prebuilts.  Or could be an OEM manufacturer themselves which would be illegal, however NOT illegal for you to purchase, obtain, or use.  

 

I highly suggest you save yourself the money and if you feel you must pay the Microsoft tax, do so for as cheaply as possible.

 

Also me ( I can either disable this Watermark at the root, Im just lazy and haven't, or load up my key generator I accidently deleted to get rid of it - the key generator would be considered unlawful btw)

 

also me.PNG

Workstation Laptop: Dell Precision 7540, Xeon E-2276M, 32gb DDR4, Quadro T2000 GPU, 4k display

Wifes Rig: ASRock B550m Riptide, Ryzen 5 5600X, Sapphire Nitro+ RX 6700 XT, 16gb (2x8) 3600mhz V-Color Skywalker RAM, ARESGAME AGS 850w PSU, 1tb WD Black SN750, 500gb Crucial m.2, DIYPC MA01-G case

My Rig: ASRock B450m Pro4, Ryzen 5 3600, ARESGAME River 5 CPU cooler, EVGA RTX 2060 KO, 16gb (2x8) 3600mhz TeamGroup T-Force RAM, ARESGAME AGV750w PSU, 1tb WD Black SN750 NVMe Win 10 boot drive, 3tb Hitachi 7200 RPM HDD, Fractal Design Focus G Mini custom painted.  

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 video card benchmark result - AMD Ryzen 5 3600,ASRock B450M Pro4 (3dmark.com)

Daughter 1 Rig: ASrock B450 Pro4, Ryzen 7 1700 @ 4.2ghz all core 1.4vCore, AMD R9 Fury X w/ Swiftech KOMODO waterblock, Custom Loop 2x240mm + 1x120mm radiators in push/pull 16gb (2x8) Patriot Viper CL14 2666mhz RAM, Corsair HX850 PSU, 250gb Samsun 960 EVO NVMe Win 10 boot drive, 500gb Samsung 840 EVO SSD, 512GB TeamGroup MP30 M.2 SATA III SSD, SuperTalent 512gb SATA III SSD, CoolerMaster HAF XM Case. 

https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/37004594?

Daughter 2 Rig: ASUS B350-PRIME ATX, Ryzen 7 1700, Sapphire Nitro+ R9 Fury Tri-X, 16gb (2x8) 3200mhz V-Color Skywalker, ANTEC Earthwatts 750w PSU, MasterLiquid Lite 120 AIO cooler in Push/Pull config as rear exhaust, 250gb Samsung 850 Evo SSD, Patriot Burst 240gb SSD, Cougar MX330-X Case

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
34 minutes ago, vujs said:

Hi, I am going to be building my pc in a few days and I was wondering about the Windows installation. I looked up the official prices and they were pretty expensive. I was wondering where everybody gets their activation key, because I have looked on ebay and it is about 3-5 euros but I've heard they do not give legit keys or something. So where would you guys advise to get activation keys?

Thanks in advance for any advice or replies!

There are tons of options. 

 

The grey market. This would be whats being sold on ebay and Kinguin and such. These keys could be bought with stolen credit cards and then sold, they could be keys from areas of the world that Windows is much cheaper or they could be someone had a lot of keys and decided to dump them. Keep in mind that sometimes these keys get black listed by Microsoft, so you might have to buy keys multiple times over the course of the PC's life. 

 

There are OEM keys. OEM keys are technically suppose to be sold to a builder. So like Dell, HP, Lenovo, ect. Like @Tristerin pointed out it could a computer shop might have some extra ones. OEM keys specfically do not get Microsoft Technical support. Meaning companies like DELL, HP, etc, provide the support needed, or the computer shop you bought it from if they were the builder. OEM keys range in price, Newegg and Amazon have them for about $80-100 from what I have seen a while ago. BUT you might very well find them cheaper. They technically are tied to the motherboard for life, BUT many have pointed out that in recent years, Microsoft has gotten a bit more OK with allowing OEM keys to be moved to diffrent machines. 

 

Then there are the retail keys. These as you seen are expensive. These keys are transferable between machines and they do get MS technical support. Other than that not much to say. Keep in mind you can run Windows unactivated for as long as you want. 

I just want to sit back and watch the world burn. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted

Compared to many other things in PC, Windows key is rather midrange in price. Just think that you will use it daily for a year. Price for retail Home version is $160. That's $14/mo. Or just ¢50/day. Now let's say that you use VPN, Netflix etc. subscription service. Cheap VPN is $3/mo for 3 years. That's $108 in total. But after that's up, you need to buy again where as you have paid for OS already.

^^^^ That's my post ^^^^
<-- This is me --- That's your scrollbar -->
vvvv Who's there? vvvv

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
23 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

is $160.

Last I saw it was $119 for home and $199 for pro. But if they raised the price to $160 for home then I don’t think I’d pay full price either. 

I just want to sit back and watch the world burn. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
1 hour ago, Donut417 said:

Last I saw it was $119 for home and $199 for pro. But if they raised the price to $160 for home then I don’t think I’d pay full price either. 

It seems I'm bit over the high price of retail Home. It's something like $120-150. Here €135 (OEM is €125, but when OEM Pro is at €160...)

^^^^ That's my post ^^^^
<-- This is me --- That's your scrollbar -->
vvvv Who's there? vvvv

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted

If someone ask for price of anything, the only serious answer is legal price. If the same guy asks for a price for a car, nobody answer "hey, normal price of used car XXXX is 2000$, but I know guys who sells the same cars for 200$ - it's called grey market". It will be funny, isn't?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing Windows

×