New budget Gaming rig help

Hello all you Maintankain's

I am looking to put together a new rig specifically designed to handle MMO(WOW) type of stress for as little money as possible. I know that it is a tall order but l wanted to see what the genius level maintankadins can come up with for me.

I would like to stay with AMD for processor and I prefer ATI for the video card other than that I am not really picky. Thanks all in advance.

Not sure if you're in the UK or not but CustomPC Magazine just ran an article on building a pretty neat £410 budget PC. No graphics card but that wouldn't cost that much more.

I haven't got it to hand right now but I recall they used these bits:
Antec One Hundred Case
AMD Phenom X4 840
Corsair Vengeance 2x2GB RAM
Asus M4A88T-M/USB3 Motherboard (Fairly sure it was this one)

Will have a better look at the magazine when I get home this evening and let you know. Should run WoW fine ^.^.

Give us a limit really, whats the maximum budged you're willing to spend? Also, US or UK?

In general if you're aiming for an MMO rig, you'll just need 4gigs of RAM, a 2+ core processor and a good graphics card.

Ok dok, just got article out, those were the basic bits, apart from that it was pretty much standard other bits. Interestingly you spend like £100+ on Windows so if you're on extreme budget you can run WoW on Linux?

DaMouse404 wrote:Ok dok, just got article out, those were the basic bits, apart from that it was pretty much standard other bits. Interestingly you spend like £100+ on Windows so if you're on extreme budget you can run WoW on Linux?

I've never tried it personally, but WoW can be run in OpenGL mode I believe, and I think between that and WINE to cover any loose ends it works fine. I'm pretty sure blizzard used to have a native linux client but dropped support for it soon after vanilla launched. Ventrilo has a linux client so you wouldn't be without vent, and addons are OS agnostic. It'll just take more time and effort to get it up and running.

If you can wait a few months, you can get an AMD Llano based APU (their name for the CPU with integrated GPU) that supposedly runs wow at 1024x768 on moderate settings at 100 fps. You can read the Anandtech article here. This will completely cut out the cost of having to buy a video card. I think these new processors with the GPU integrated into them are going to make cheap low budget video cards obsolete.

Arees wrote:

DaMouse404 wrote:Ok dok, just got article out, those were the basic bits, apart from that it was pretty much standard other bits. Interestingly you spend like £100+ on Windows so if you're on extreme budget you can run WoW on Linux?

I've never tried it personally, but WoW can be run in OpenGL mode I believe, and I think between that and WINE to cover any loose ends it works fine. I'm pretty sure blizzard used to have a native linux client but dropped support for it soon after vanilla launched. Ventrilo has a linux client so you wouldn't be without vent, and addons are OS agnostic. It'll just take more time and effort to get it up and running.

If you can wait a few months, you can get an AMD Llano based APU (their name for the CPU with integrated GPU) that supposedly runs wow at 1024x768 on moderate settings at 100 fps. You can read the Anandtech article here. This will completely cut out the cost of having to buy a video card. I think these new processors with the GPU integrated into them are going to make cheap low budget video cards obsolete.

I'm quite excited about the APU's despite them not being named anything sensible.. I was wondering why we were getting all excited about arithmetic processing as I've heard ALU's called APU's before. More excited about the power of a GPU on the side for stream processing on the processor rather than graphics though.

But anyway, WoW on Linux is pretty easy if you have an up to date card with decent drivers. I literally just typed "wine Wow.exe" and it loaded up, if you want it all tweaked I imagine something like PlayOnLinux would have a WoW profile to use but I'm not sure.

Ok guys sry it has taken me so long to reply. I completely forgot that I posted this over here as well as on my other sites that I read. Anyway I am in the US and would like to stay under $500. I have a AMD 4 core processor, a hard drive with OS. I need mostly everything else. I would like to stick to AMD products and ATI video cards. Other than that I am pretty open. Thanks again for the help.

Tom's Hardware had a guide last year for a $400 pc. This year they did the $500 pc. I built mine last October off the $400 specs and upgraded the video card one level up to be around $500 total. It runs WoW very nicely at 1900x1200. Other games look good on it too. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/bud ... ,2903.html

Devistasion wrote:Ok guys sry it has taken me so long to reply. I completely forgot that I posted this over here as well as on my other sites that I read. Anyway I am in the US and would like to stay under $500. I have a AMD 4 core processor, a hard drive with OS. I need mostly everything else. I would like to stick to AMD products and ATI video cards. Other than that I am pretty open. Thanks again for the help.

It will probably be another generation or two before CPUs have a good enough GPU on them to really negate the need for a discrete card for things like WoW.

Once you have your processor already, you don't really have much in the way of choices to make outside of the graphics card. If you really want an ATI card, something in the HD 58XX range is probably good for anything in the WoW range. Just need to make sure you get a compatible board and a strong enough PSU. http://images10.newegg.com/BizIntell/tool/psucalc/index.html will help you figure out what wattage you need once you figure out your other components.

gibborim wrote:

Devistasion wrote:Ok guys sry it has taken me so long to reply. I completely forgot that I posted this over here as well as on my other sites that I read. Anyway I am in the US and would like to stay under $500. I have a AMD 4 core processor, a hard drive with OS. I need mostly everything else. I would like to stick to AMD products and ATI video cards. Other than that I am pretty open. Thanks again for the help.

Once you have your processor already, you don't really have much in the way of choices to make outside of the graphics card. If you really want an ATI card, something in the HD 58XX range is probably good for anything in the WoW range. Just need to make sure you get a compatible board and a strong enough PSU. http://images10.newegg.com/BizIntell/tool/psucalc/index.html will help you figure out what wattage you need once you figure out your other components.

That thing overestimates by a lot. My HTPC is happily running off a 150W power supply, it claims I need a 275W one. Likewise with my desktop (claims I need 600W, when I'm happily running off a 500W, with headroom for overclocking). The antec one seems more accurate - at least it gives something slightly above the sum of the TDPs, rather than 50-100% more.

Talaii wrote:That thing overestimates by a lot. My HTPC is happily running off a 150W power supply, it claims I need a 275W one. Likewise with my desktop (claims I need 600W, when I'm happily running off a 500W, with headroom for overclocking). The antec one seems more accurate - at least it gives something slightly above the sum of the TDPs, rather than 50-100% more.

Given the questionable quality of most wattage ratings PSU makers claim and giving room for some degradation, it seems reasonable to overshoot a bit.