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Building a semi WoW only PC

4

4LC4PON3

DERP!
Joined
Jan 18, 2005
Messages
4,230
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming Only Nothing else
2) What's your budget? No real Budget just need it Cheap
3) Where do you live? Elbridge NY
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? I need PSU, CPU, Ram & HDD (everything else I have)
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Antec 300, Monitor 1600x900, Mouse and Keyboard, DVD Burner & DVD Burner
6) Will you be overclocking? Nope
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have? 1600x900
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC? Today
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? Do not need SLI or Crossfire
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? 32bit & 64bit? I have both 32 and 64 bit windows 7 or XP. Either or

***********************************************************

This is not a build for me but my Son. I am getting him into WoW with me and maybe a couple of other games that arent really high demanding games. I need this to be Inexpensive and Needs to run WoW (Main Priority)

I have right now for this PC a XFX HD-577X-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770 1GB

Thanks & im buying Today or atleast the end of the weekend
 
161 GIGABYTE GA-770TA-UD3 AM3 + AMD Phenom II X2 550
100 G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB)
50 CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX 400W

Shipped total is 323 & there is 30 dollars in MIR..

Also of note the same motherboard with a quad is only 7 bucks more, but unless something changed since I stopped playing wow it barely utilized the 2nd core much less the 3rd & 4rd so the higher clocked dual core would perform well above the slower quad.
 
This is what I got

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 500GB
CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (PC3 10666)
AMD Athlon II X4 635 Propus 2.9GHz
GIGABYTE GA-770TA-UD3 AM3 AMD 770

$380.75

i will wait to see what others have to say before ordering.
 
I Did just consult teh interwebs & wow still only uses 2 cores.. So if going with the quad I linked above you will get the same performance as this that is 35 dollars cheaper.

Also Atara is right though if you have a fry's near by that deal is better simply by being just a hair more expensive, but also being a little faster.
 
WoW will most likely have quad core support for cataclysm much like when dual core support was added.
 
yeah i was thinking that myself. im going to stick with quad core only. what about Ram is 4gb needed or can 2gb suffice
 
If wow was going to up & add quad support for cataclysm then it would probably already be known since the beta opt in's have started for it. I don't think they will give quad support until it gets a complete engine rewrite.
 
CPU: WoW currently uses up to 3 cores. Most work done on additional cores involves model loading so it will make a difference when you go into a huge city and BAM all of a sudden you are trying to load 1000 textures at once.

RAM: WoW is a 32-bit program and will never use more than 2gb of ram under any circumstances, ever. With high enough settings flying around in Northrend you can actually get it to try to request more than 2gb of ram, at which point the game will crash. So with that being said, all you "need" is 2GB + whatever your system will be using in the background. That means you could probably get away with 3GB. It also means that if you for example had a choice between 6GB of PC1600 or 12GB of PC1333, go with the smaller amount of faster ram instead.

Hard Drive: This will have an enormous impact on your WoW game-play experience and is probably the most underrated component that most people gloss-over when building their computer. World of Warcraft loads everything on the fly, and especially going into crowded areas, it's going to be trying to load a LOT of stuff at once.

Even on a modern 7200rpm drive it's not uncommon for textures to still be loading around you 30-60 seconds after you've zoned into Dalaran. In fact, historically, World of Warcraft was one of the few games that had intense enough disk access that it actually ran faster on server SCSI drives than high-speed consumer drives such as the Raptor.

With SSD's available now it really is a match made in heaven. No game I've ever played benefits from an SSD as much as WoW does. You can zone into places almost instantly compared to taking 10+ seconds and you never see textures still loading after you've already zoned in to somewhere.

Video Card: WoW is much more CPU intensive than it is GPU intensive but can nevertheless make full use of both Crossfire and SLI technologies. WoW even supports 4-way crossfire. The 5770 should be a fine card though nothing about WoW will take advantage of the DX11 features on that card. Older cards are where the real bargains are for WoW. 4870x2 would deliver 5870 performance for about the same cost of the 5770. A 4890 would be faster than the 5770 but cheaper. Nvidia cards from GTX260-GTX295 can also be had pretty cheap and will perform great with WoW.
 
4LC4PON3 said:
This is what I got

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 500GB
CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (PC3 10666)
AMD Athlon II X4 635 Propus 2.9GHz
GIGABYTE GA-770TA-UD3 AM3 AMD 770

$380.75

i will wait to see what others have to say before ordering.
Click to expand...

Looks solid to me.
 
4LC4PON3 said:
This is what I got

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 500GB
CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (PC3 10666)
AMD Athlon II X4 635 Propus 2.9GHz
GIGABYTE GA-770TA-UD3 AM3 AMD 770

$380.75

i will wait to see what others have to say before ordering.
Click to expand...

I would say its a solid build. You shouldnt have any problems with it in the long run. The only upgrade I would consider is the same mobo combo's with the Phenom II x4 925 for 31 dollars more if you have it to spend. If you dont though the 635 will still serve you well.
 
Ok here is an Update the Wife went and gave my son the Computer that she had & she got a new laptop. So Im going to build myself a New PC. Im going to stick with most of the parts listed above but switch it up a bit. Im going to change the Board and CPU. What do you guys think about the boards listed below.

Military Class Components/OC Genie/CPU Core Unlock
MSI 870A-G54 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard 79.99 Free Shipping

or

ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO AM3 99.99 with 10% off code and free shipping.

or do you think the gigabyte board you listed is still the best option. GIGABYTE GA-770TA-UD3 AM3 AMD 770

I can do 100 Max on a Board so anything that is 99.99 with free shipping or less will do.
 
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GotNoRice said:
CPU:
Video Card: WoW is much more CPU intensive than it is GPU intensive but can nevertheless make full use of both Crossfire and SLI technologies. WoW even supports 4-way crossfire. The 5770 should be a fine card though nothing about WoW will take advantage of the DX11 features on that card. Older cards are where the real bargains are for WoW. 4870x2 would deliver 5870 performance for about the same cost of the 5770. A 4890 would be faster than the 5770 but cheaper. Nvidia cards from GTX260-GTX295 can also be had pretty cheap and will perform great with WoW.
Click to expand...

Everyone I've talked to has nothing but horror stores regarding SLI in WoW, even recently, late in Wrath. When I tried to use SLI about a year ago I actually got lower framerates ... I was under the assumption that they still hadn't fixed that.

The point about the SSD boosting performance is spot on, my textures load almost instantly on a G2 160GB. Only problem is, their crappy 32-bit executable won't even let me play at high video settings anymore due to the ram crash, which has been happening to me for months but became game-killing in the latest patch.
 
nbuubu said:
Everyone I've talked to has nothing but horror stores regarding SLI in WoW, even recently, late in Wrath. When I tried to use SLI about a year ago I actually got lower framerates ... I was under the assumption that they still hadn't fixed that.
Click to expand...

Well it's been a while since I used SLI, most of my experience is with Crossfire which works very well with WoW.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...est-DirectX-11-graphics-card/Reviews/?page=10

That is a 5970 review but also has numbers for a GTX285 single and in SLI.

The point about the SSD boosting performance is spot on, my textures load almost instantly on a G2 160GB. Only problem is, their crappy 32-bit executable won't even let me play at high video settings anymore due to the ram crash, which has been happening to me for months but became game-killing in the latest patch.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think the out of memory error is actually made worse by having a faster hard drive. Almost as if they are counting on the slow rate at which textures are loaded from a regular mechanical hard drive as some kind of built-in throttling mechanism. I know they already have it so that it only attempts to load textures that are in front of you. That is why the easiest way to make the game crash is to fly around in the middle of Northrend near Dalaran and spin your camera around. With a regular hard drive, simply spinning the mouse around while you are flying won't have you looking in any one direction long enough to load any significant amount of textures. With an SSD you're loading everything so fast, gg you just crashed:

5gigs.png
 
4LC4PON3 said:
Ok here is an Update the Wife went and gave my son the Computer that she had & she got a new laptop. So Im going to build myself a New PC. Im going to stick with most of the parts listed above but switch it up a bit. Im going to change the Board and CPU. What do you guys think about the boards listed below.

Military Class Components/OC Genie/CPU Core Unlock
MSI 870A-G54 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard 79.99 Free Shipping

or

ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO AM3 99.99 with 10% off code and free shipping.

or do you think the gigabyte board you listed is still the best option. GIGABYTE GA-770TA-UD3 AM3 AMD 770

I can do 100 Max on a Board so anything that is 99.99 with free shipping or less will do.
Click to expand...

Is there a CPU going with it.. Combo deals would be helpfull.. I See no reason to change the board from the original Gigabyte though unless it's missing a feature you want. If your budget has gone up a little the Phenom x4 925 combo discussed above is still a good recommendation.
 
Im going to be getting my hands on a 955 black edition from a friend who owe's me some cash and has a new 955 black he is going to trade me instead of paying cash.

Im going to order everything today just trying to figure out a good board with free shipping if possible. im just wondering is the 3.0 stuff worth the extra cash for gaming?
 
GotNoRice said:
With an SSD you're loading everything so fast, gg you just crashed
Click to expand...

I can make my otherwise powerful computer crash in WoW simply by running one lap around Dalaran on a ground mount.

They seriously need to fix that.

To the OP, I'd definitely recommend skewing your build to favor the CPU. It's one of the the most important things in achieving decent WoW performance. I upgraded from an Nvidia 8800 to a 285, and didn't see nearly as much of a jump as when I went from my old C2D to a core i7.
 
Plus, I don't know where I read it, but I believe ATI cards usually beat Nvidia in WoW, where the situation would otherwise be reversed when looking at other games. Maybe it's the drivers.

If you've already got an ATI card I think you're pretty well off.
 
What I got in hand right now is

XFX 5770 1gb
antec 300
Mouse + WoW Gaming Mouse
Monitor 1600x900
955 Black Edition HDZ955FBGIBOX

What I have in my cart at this moment
Samsung F3 500GB
Corsair 750TX (for Future video card upgrades)
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) (7-7-7-21 1.5V)

All im missing is a Mobo to go with it
 
MSI 870A-G54 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

This is good as long as you don't plan on SLI'ing video cards later on.
 
Looks good, grats on the 955, otherwise I would have suggested swapping that 635 for a PII X3 720BE and OC it to the moon.

As for the MB, Newegg's got an Open Box MSI 790FX for a good price, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130223R

And if you're really lucky and get the retail box to go with it, you might be able to snag the MIR available to the retail version, but don't count on it...
 
horrorshow said:
MSI 870A-G54 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

This is good as long as you don't plan on SLI'ing video cards later on.
Click to expand...

Yea his 5770 is good as long as he doesnt plan on SLI'ing video cards too

@4LC4PON3 the USB 3.0 & SATA III stuff aint gonna help you in gaming the least little bit..

I Would get GIGABYTE GA-770T-USB3 AM3 (88 shipped) if you dont ever see Crossfire happening. or GIGABYTE GA-790XTA-UD4 AM3 (99 shipped 84 After Rebate) if you do.

If your not sure then I would get the 790x unless its gonna break your budget for the 11 dollar shipped difference.

Edit: also both have USB 3.0 & the 790x also has SATA III
 
Thanks for all the recommendations

anyways I went on a few [H] Reviews on this & decided to get a Different Mobo

ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO AM3 AMD 785G HDMI - With Promo Code it was 89.99 Shipped: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131398

[H] gave it a Gold Award and Kyle had nothing bad to say at all. Thanks for the Help Today was much appreciated. WIll get picks up when I can
 
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I got a quick question for you guys. Right now i have just about everything in hand but the CPU and HDD here is my Question

You meantioned the AMD Athlon II X4 635 Propus 2.9GHz & the Phenom II 925. How much of a difference will I lose If i Dont get the Phenom and go with the Athlon II for gaming?
 
Last edited:
4LC4PON3 said:
I got a quick question for you guys. Right now i have just about everything in hand but the CPU and HDD here is my Question

You meantioned the AMD Athlon II X4 635 Propus 2.9GHz & the Phenom II 925. How much of a difference will I lose If i Dont get the Phenom and go with the Athlon II for gaming?
Click to expand...

About a 15% to 20% performance loss if you go with the Athlon X4 635 over the Phenom II 925.
 
unfortunetely he ended up paying me in cash and kept the 955. So right now i got the cash for the 925 wich im going to order tomorrow along with the HDD.
 
Danny Bui said:
Once you factor in the cost of a HSF, it costs just as much as a Phenom II 925 or even 955.
Click to expand...

true enough, but if he's like me and does not use the stock HSF plus has a multitude of extra aftermarket verions lieing around, then it makes little difference. (anyone need a Gemini II, OCZ Vendetta, or Asus Lion?)
 
Thanks for the Tips guys. So far this PC is almost complete. I just got paid yesturday a bunch of Cash for a networking Job. so far this is what I have and what im going to be ordering. Since its a Holiday there will be delays as always

What I have
Antec 300
ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS SATA 24X DVD Burner
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB
XFX Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT)

What I need
All I need now is a CPU and PSU. Right now there is a Combo PSU deal on the 955 with a Corsair 650TX for $229.98 with 30 instant & 20 Dollar in Combo.

I didnt order them yet cause for some reason im really stuck on getting a x6 core thuban. what do you guys think?? Do you think the x6 core will be worth it over the 955?
 
4LC4PON3 said:
I didnt order them yet cause for some reason im really stuck on getting a x6 core thuban. what do you guys think?? Do you think the x6 core will be worth it over the 955?
Click to expand...

No, definitely not for WoW and not for most other games at this point either.

I think you're still overlooking the hard drive. The hard drive really is one of if not the most critical component when it comes to maintaining fluid smooth gameplay in WoW, to the extent that even if you had to go down to something like a 5670 and a dual-core athlon to afford the SSD, you'd still end up with an overall better gaming experience.
 
I understand that but to be honest when I had my other rig running the f3 500gb i was actually satisfied with the performance from the drive. I do understand that going SSD is a stepup.

to me the cost of an SSD for the little amount of space you get just doesnt make me want to buy one.
 
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