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With Mists of Panderia coming out next year, I'm wondering if it'd be possible to run wow on a $500 (just talking tower here, not accessories/monitor) machine? What kind of MB/CPU/RAM/VIDEO would it take to run it at a smooth 60fps?

(Thinking of buying a WoW playing system for my brother's wife, her laptop can't handle it)

Tried building decent ones at Dell, but I hear that the part failure rate is ridiculously high....

Cheap dells and similar are not inexpensive - they are cheap.

For $500 you'll want to build it yourself. WoW doesn't need a lot of CPU, nor even a high end graphics card. It has a lot of data, though, so I'd consider a small (64GB) SSD, then 4-8GB memory, and a cheap CPU/mobo combo. Round it off with an inexpensive graphics card and it should be just fine. Scope out the deals and take a week or two ordering the parts and you might be able to get more bang for your buck. You should be able to get a bundled version of windows 7 with the hard drive or cpu/mobo combo for $80-$100.

It is about time I learned how to put a PC together from scratch anyway....

Better to learn on a cheap machine than an expensive one. Besides, you probably have pieces laying around (hard drives, dvd drives, cases, power supplies, etc) WHICH WOULD MAKE IT EVEN CHEAPER

and a wild capslock appears...

I am playing WoW at full settings on a $600 machine I bought, and that was nearly a year ago now. I am sure you can find a good system for much cheaper. HP usually has some good ones, but you would have also update the power supply and graphics card usually.

See that's what I thought, was yours pre-built or self-built? I'd rather just buy it and give it to her instead of building from the ground up....

Well it was mostly pre-built. I also bought a 500w power supply and just installed it myself, then used an older graphics card that still was good enough to handle WoW at max. I didn't change anything else. So it wouldn't be entirely pre-built, but it would be easier then doing it from nothing.

The sucky thing is if you want to go entirely pre-built, all the companies are cutting costs by removing decent power supplies, HP and Dell have a ridiculously low 250w as the base, which is even less then the system I got years ago. That is not enough to handle any decent cards, even most of the cheaper ones, while still using stuff like my USB ports. The only ones that are not skimping out is the "gaming machines" and obviously they love to overprice those bitches since they know gamers are usually willing to pay out the ass over some old lady who just wants an e-mail machine.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuh....

figures. I guess I'm going to look into building, because you're absolutely right.

3 years ago I bought a basic $500 machine from Newegg, iBuyPower. After getting a 1080p Monitor I had to upgrade to a new card. I think it was around $150. They have similar deals out there. This is actually the first off the shelf machine that I've purchased in several years.

Hmmm, did some digging, what would be wrong with this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229285

how big a difference am I look at with:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229253
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883227359

instead?

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229266

for an intel chip?

I don't know, I have never heard anything good from Cyberpower or IBUYPower, but I have never owned one myself, so I may be overly critical for nothing. I just hear bad stories from friends.

My experience has been that if I buy a cheap computer pre-made, it's nothing but trouble. I spend way too much time fixing it - the drivers are junk, the hardware is junk, and it's simply not worth it. If you want to buy something pre-made, it has to at least be mid-range computer or better. If I need cheap, I build it myself - even if it costs more than the equivalent pre-built system, I know I won't be babysitting it constantly.

Well either way I'd buy the insurance for them. I guess my biggest concern for these pre-built system is thus:

Which processor would be the best out of these? How's that i5 2500k, Phenom II X4 955 or the AMD FX-Series FX-4100? How reliable/fast are they?
Which one of those videos cards is going to suck the least? The Radeon 6670, 6870 or the GTX 560?

I guess I'm wondering if it's worth getting:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229253 with the Phenom II X4 965(3.4GHz) and the GTX 560

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883227359 with the Phenom II X4 955(3.2GHz) and the AMD 6870

cause I think that's the best I'm going to do at newegg with their prebuilt systems under $900.

(Why am I so intent on Newegg? Because I just qualified for their credit and if I don't have to pay for most of this in one chunk, I'm not. Plus my brother told me, after I told him about the credit, that he'd reimburse me between 400-500 over the 500 I was going to spend to really get her a "singing" computer)

Dell GX series are not bad base machine. These are office level equipment (which IMO better than precision which is home base PC) Micro Center are selling the GX600 series for like 100-200$. You can switch out the HDD and video card (on board kinda sucks but workable since sometimes I do play WoW at work during night shift) All comes with Window XP/7 base (thus the range from 100-200 )

I was bored and threw together a quick build just barely under 900. If you feel like dealing with mail in rebates it will be even cheaper. Feel free to rip it apart or suggest changes.

Item #: N82E16827135204


Item #: N82E16811129042 -$10.00 Instant
$15.00 Mail-in Rebate

Item #: N82E16822148697

Item #: N82E16814127592 $20.00 Mail-in Rebate Card

Item #: N82E16817153116 -$15.00 Instant
$25.00 Mail-in Rebate

Item #: N82E16820231311

Item #: N82E16813130583 -$25.00 Instant
$20.00 Mail-in Rebate Card

Item #: N82E16819115072

Item #: N82E16832116986

Shegokigo said:

Tried building decent ones at Dell, but I hear that the part failure rate is ridiculously high....

Click to expand...

a little late as you're on the build it yourself route (which is abetter route) I have to say,
I have a dell, 5 years old. Replaced graphics card (purchased and installed myself) when I got it. Nothing has failed on it yet.
Identical computer with different graphics card bought at the same time, also still going strong.

I am apparently the only person that has had luck with Dells. I also have a 7 year old Dell laptop, while not a gaming machine has not failed me yet either.

Man, they must have beefed up the graphics in WoW since I stopped playing... back in the day, that shit would run on my old, weak laptop with just an onboard intel video adapter.

GasBandit said:

Man, they must have beefed up the graphics in WoW since I stopped playing... back in the day, that shit would run on my old, weak laptop with just an onboard intel video adapter.

Click to expand...

They have been improving much of the graphics system, including the water and lighting. It all looks much better these days.

MoP looks like it may take the requirements even higher, since they are utilizing a new lighting system that they were showing off in the Art panel. If you watch videos of MoP gameplay, you even see shadows now realistically falling on the character models, which never really happened before, plus a much better feeling of depth.

When my brother brought the idea up to me, I think he wanted to get her playing some co-op games too like Portal 2, and Diablo 3 etc. I think honestly what he wanted me to do was shell out like $500 and he'd put in like 300-400 more to make it the best gaming PC it could be for that price range. Not specifically for WoW alone.

Just for the hell of it, what would you guys build, with an $800 budget off Newegg, if you were building it yourself?

Shegokigo said:

When my brother brought the idea up to me, I think he wanted to get her playing some co-op games too like Portal 2, and Diablo 3 etc. I think honestly what he wanted me to do was shell out like $500 and he'd put in like 300-400 more to make it the best gaming PC it could be for that price range. Not specifically for WoW alone.

Just for the hell of it, what would you guys build, with an $800 budget off Newegg, if you were building it yourself?

Click to expand...

Because I am lazy, I usually go with the midline from TechReport - and as it happens, they have handy links to newegg.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21462/6

Component Item Price​

Processor Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz $219.99​

Motherboard Asus P8Z68-V LE $132.99​

Memory Corsair 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 $48.99​

Graphics Asus Radeon HD 6870 1GB TOP $189.99​

Storage Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB $59.99​

Asus DRW-24B1ST $20.99​

Audio Asus Xonar DG $26.00​

Enclosure NZXT H2 $89.99​

Power supply Seasonic M12II 520W $92.99​

Total $881.92​

Click to expand...

You can probably shave some off there with just using onboard audio, and personally, I'd shell out the 10 more bucks to get the Nvidia GPU.


If I know PatrThom though, he'll have something way more in depth But TechReport has pretty much never steered me wrong.
Added at: 13:04
Man... those tables sure don't copy/paste well. Just dragselect over the text to read it.

For those that may be curious about the new lighting system, just skip ahead to 36:55. I do recommend watching the whole thing though if you are interested in the art side of WoW.

If your budget is closer to $800, Shego, and you want something that can play Portal 2 and Diablo 3, then maybe you can just buy a pre-built and replace a few parts. Would save some time over building it entirely from scratch. Sadly I can't research much here at work, already taking some chances just posting WoW info, but I may try some later.

I don't really see the point in buying a pre-built PC if you're going to swap out half the parts. You're not going to save much money building it yourself, but you'll end up with better, and easier to work with, components.
From your past posts I'm guessing you've replaced at least graphics cards, ram, hard drives, and cpu. You've also installed windows on your own. There really isn't much more to do with putting your own computer together.
I'd probably buy the one I posted above. I'd probably do more research into whether there is a better motherboard and video card though. I'm just lazy today and don't want to think about it anymore.

Not sure if the last post is toward me and my suggestion, but figure I would make mention of my system.

When it comes to my PC, I only replaced the power supply and put in an old graphics card, it was a $600 HP system, and I got the 500w Power Supply from a friend. Everything else from drives to ram are the same at the standard, and I am able to run games like Diablo 3, Mass Effect 2, Portal 2, etc... all at max settings and high FPS. The only part that failed on it recently was the old graphics card, and that was because it was already a repair job from BFG before they went under.

It was more directed to Shego. It was just my opinion on pre-built versus build your own.

Why don't I like pre-built computers for something like Shego wants?
Adding parts to a pre-built system will be easier, but it will end up being the same if not more price wise. With the pre-built systems you will most likely get a crappy motherboard that doesn't support USB3 or SATA 6gb. You'll also get a case that will be a bitch to work in. They were meant to be put together and stay together. Upgrades to it will be a pain. You'll get the joy of uninstalling all the crap that comes pre-installed on it.

With newegg, you can also get barebone system and just add stuff to it (much better if you are planning to replace stuff) like board, chip, power, and case.

Well shut my mouth wiiiiide open... those specs I gave were from the September system guide... and now, just this very instant, TechReport has just come out with a new system guide!

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21876/4

And here's the stats for the "middle" box:



Processor Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz $219.99
Motherboard Asus P8Z68-V LE $129.99
Memory Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 $44.99
Graphics Asus GeForce GTX 560 DirectCU II OC $199.99
Storage Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB $69.99
Asus DRW-24B1ST $19.99
Audio Asus Xonar DG $21.99
Enclosure NZXT H2 $99.99
Power supply Seasonic M12II 520W $89.99
Total $896.91

I'd kill the Audio and get a more powerful power supply but that's looking exactly like what would get this whole thing taken care of.

Anyone want to chime in on that? Because honestly I think the i5-2500k and the GTX 560 were what I felt strongest about getting for the build.

I like that better, except I'd swap in the hard drive I picked and drop the audio card. That also doesn't include windows, so it'll end up breaking the $900 if you have to buy it.

personally at this day and age I would get at LEAST 2 drive mirrored. that way if one crap out, you still have the other drive to work off.

I think I've decided to make the deal swing in my favor a bit.

I'm going to order a GTX 580 and swap it out with my 5870OC so she can have that in her new system build.

Two birds, one shotgun.

Shegokigo said:

I think I've decided to make the deal swing in my favor a bit.

I'm going to order a GTX 580 and swap it out with my 5870OC so she can have that in her new system build.

Two birds, one shotgun.

Click to expand...

Heh, that works for me. It is your money, so she just have to accept what you give her. I'm jealous of your GTX 580. I only got GTX 280 myself. (that should be right or was it 290) hehe

Wait a minute... is the i5-2500k better than my i7 940 (OC 3.4ghz)???

Crap, am I almost building her a better system than my current rig? Wtf?

Shegokigo said:

Wait a minute... is the i5-2500k better than my i7 940 (OC 3.4ghz)???

Crap, am I almost building her a better system than my current rig? Wtf?

Click to expand...

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processor-comparison/intel-processor-ratings.html

I think i7 is best.

Well this is what got me thinking:

http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/980137-i7-940-vs-i5-2500k.html
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

The i7 940 (granted it's at 2.93ghz) ranks as 63rd while the i5 2500k ranks 35th.

As I said, though, you get far less bang for your buck when it comes to gaming when you spend money on CPU instead of GPU. Especially if you're overclocking the older CPU.

Sorry to be so late, folks. I knew I wouldn't want to chime in until I had more reliable Internet access. A few things, then:

• You're going to really handicap the system if you don't spend at least $650-$700 total.
• Yes, a 2500k CPU will beat out your 940. The 940 will put up a good fight, but the 2500k will win every time.
• Going the 'hand-me-down' route with the GTX580/5870OC swap would be an excellent idea.
• WoW doesn't need an incredible machine, but you didn't really say if other stuff was going to come later, so we don't know how much headroom you'll need.
• Most games still don't need multiple cores, they need good clock speed. A dual-core running 3.7GHz will usually beat a quad- or hex-core processor running 3.1GHz in games.
• Intel beats AMD for gaming performance right now.
• The OS of choice is going to be Win7 x64. The big choice will be home/pro.
• Consider 4GB RAM to be your minimum.
• Put your primary money into the CPU/GPU/MLB right now, not HDD. If it's going to be an online gaming machine, all the important data is going to be on the server anyway. If her HDD dies you can always reinstall.

Here's a quick parts list I threw together. Criticism welcome, but be ready to back it up. I am.

$120.00 PSU - Seasonic SS-560KM (my current fave PSU)
$120.00 CPU - Intel Core i3-2100 (faster in gaming than AMD, upgradeable later)
$120.00 MLB - GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 (solid MLB with multiple GPU slots)
$50.00 RAM - Quality* 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1333 (yes, only 1333)
$75.00 HDD - Quality* 7200rpm 500GB 3.5" SATA-3 drive
$100.00 OS - Win7 x64 Home Premium OEM
$75.00 CAS - IN WIN Dragon Slayer MicroATX Mini Tower Case (roomy and cheap!)
$25.00 ODD - DVD/CD burner (spend more for Blu-ray if you want, I guess)
$0.00 GPU - Hand-me-down 5870OC (priceless)
-------
$685.00 - Total (does not include kbd/mouse, tax)
--Patrick
*No specific brand. Just pick something reputable with good reviews and a good guarantee.

Hey PatrThom, I am always on the impression that Pro is better than Home. Is this still true? since you recommend home Premium instead of Pro.

Chibibar said:

Hey PatrThom, I am always on the impression that Pro is better than Home. Is this still true? since you recommend home Premium instead of Pro.

Click to expand...

There's not much that the professional versions of Windows do that the average user, or even a gamer, actually needs. In the last decade of using XP, Vista and Windows 7, I can't think of a single instance when I've felt a lack using the home version of those OSes.

Pro gives you a virtual windows XP machine, which some (much) older games require.

Beyond that, there are no additional benefits that a gamer would use.

The only reason I recommended Home in this instance was due to its lower cost and the budget sensitivity of this build.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

The only reason I recommended Home in this instance was due to its lower cost and the budget sensitivity of this build.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

Glad I signed up as a "developer" and got my copy of Ultimate gratis.

Disconnected said:

I am apparently the only person that has had luck with Dells. I also have a 7 year old Dell laptop, while not a gaming machine has not failed me yet either.

Click to expand...

I have owned over 7 dells so far and the only one that had any problems was a laptop that was poorly designed and was prone to overheating. After replacing the motherboard and putting it on one of those fan bases it has also been reliable.

It's obviously anecdotal but I've always had a great experience with Dell and will probably order more from them in the future.

My business has had pretty good use out of a half dozen or so Dell Vostro 200 serieses. Of course, they're mostly glorified word processors and e-mail clients, so they're not exactly being pushed hard... but the worst they've suffered is one needed a new power supply after a couple years.

Our campus use primary Dell PC and Servers. We don't use Precision (home version) we use Optiplex version and those are pretty good.

Even our graphical production department (using Adobe CS 5.5 suite) have no issue with these machines

I've had horrible experiences with Dell laptops, but my Dell XPS desktop has been rock solid since 2005. I'm most likely going to keep the newer components in it that I've upgraded over time (like the PSU, harddrive, and the monitor), and then build a new machine with a tad more money going to the CPU and GPU.

Every brand has their lemons. Every brand. To paraphrase an old department store commercial, "It's what's in the bag that counts, not who's on it." If you buy the lowest-priced model of just about any line, you pay for it later.

--Patrick