Computer Build with a Twist

[Lostwalker]

Hello Everyone,

I’ve been boxing for a little over a year now and thinking of building a new computer. I know there are a ton of posts on what parts to get and will this work, but my end goal is a little different.

I want to build a computer that will allow me to play in end game raids on my main account while having the other four accounts active as well. My goal is to build a computer that will allow me to be in a full 25m raid with around 60FPS, while my other four accounts are either in Dalaran selling stuff, in BGs, or at the auction house.

This is what I came up with…

1. Processor
A. Intel® Core™ i7 920 Processor (4x 2.66GHz/8MB L3 Cache) - $289
Not sure if the higher processors are really worth the extra cost or not.

2. Ram - (12GB)
A. CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 - $600
B. G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 - $315
Again not sure if the cost is worth it for the corsair over the lower g.skill

5. Video Card
A. ATI Radeon HD 5850 - 1GB - $300
B. ATI Radeon HD 5870 - 1GB - $400
I was thinking of getting two video cards and running the slave accounts off the second card. Any thoughts or suggestions?

6. Motherboard
A. GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD7 LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb - $350
B. GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb - $200
I don’t really see a reason to go with the higher priced board over the lower one, your thoughts?

7. Power Supply - $135
COOLER MASTER GX Series RS750-ACAAE3-US 750W ATX12V v2.31 SLI Certified
This should be enough power to run everything?

8. SSD Harddrive
Suggestions on a good SSD, I’m just looking to run WoW on it.

Anyways, what do you guys thing, do you think this system will run my 5 accounts smoothly? Even if I have one in a 25m raid, say 2 in BGs, one at the auction house, and one flying someplace or selling mats?

[ebony]

think that do the job on 100fps each wow
5 wows
on firefox
streaming
Playing SC2
still might have some left over for winamp

[EaTCarbS]

oh yea. Depending on the number of monitors you are using, use Crossfire.

[burningforce]

1- the i7 920 is the best of the best for multitasking tasks for that price range, so I would stick with it

2 - not sure were you are getting your parts from, but those are pretty expensive prices, even for 12GB. and just to let you know, option B will not work with i7 motherboards/processors because they require 3 memory dimms (triple channel) I think that is correct. also you can get a lower speed DDR dimms for cheaper, the high speed dimms are good if you plan on some serious overclocking (3.6GHz+) and need the extra headroom that they provide. I am not even sure they would run at that speed if you occupy all the memory spots on the motherboard, as the processor would be the limiting factor.

3 - the ATI 5850 is a great card, but i am not sure you would see a major FPS increase by utilizing dual cards. too me it seems like wasted money as the 5850 can perform very well if you have many monitors and/or a larger then normal monitor as the card scales with resolution very well.

4 - here is the gigabyte comparison for the GA-x58A-UD7, UD3R, and UD5 motherboards GIGABYTE - Product - Motherboard - Comparison Sheet as you can see they are closely matched. I would look into getting the GA-x58A-UD3R motherboard, but make sure you research all three to see if I missed something.

5 - not sure if that power supply is good or not, I do not see it listed on JonnyGURU.com so I am not sure if that is good or bad. I would go with corsair as they have cheap but durable power supplies. and I think 750W should be enough to power everything, depending on case fans, hard drives, etc. here is a PSU calculator to check with, eXtreme Power Supply Calculator

6 - I will let someone else help you with SSD drives as i do not know too much about the different ones. all I know is Intel drives has the best random read but very slow sustained write speed, while the other SSD has a little slower then intel random reads but fast sustained write speed.

I also do not think you would have a problem with 5 instances of Wow open while in a 25m raid or whatever you had planned. But alas I only have a Q6600 processor and I get maxed out with 4 instances of Wow . I think Ualaa can help you more then I could, good luck and hope you enjoy your new system

[Ualaa]

The system will play fine.

An i7 920 will run the game just fine. And you can overclock it a little, if you get a better then stock cooler. For what you get, faster processors are probably not worthwhile. Although if you want to seriously overclock (probably with water cooling), the unlocked multiplier on a i7 965 is nice... at close to $1000 extra though.

In your ram section, you have 2x3GB and 2x2GB, but the overview mentions 12GB. You'd want to have at least 6GB; the general rule is 1GB for the OS and 1GB extra per wow you'll be running.

Warcraft is not very video intensive. Either card will likely run the game just fine for 5 boxing. Shadows is about the only feature that really pushes cards when boxing, and aside from the Fire event with bonfires and juggling torches, you can turn shadows off entirely and not miss them anywhere at all. I'd go with a single strong video card, over multiple cards.

If you have the budget, I'd do a 160GB Intel generation 2 SSD (X25-M), for both warcraft and the operating system. With TRIM, the SSD will likely outlive the computer, and nothing beats the read speed on this drive. If you're just doing WoW on the drive and that's it, you won't need more then a 30-40GB drive, I like the Patriot Torq line, but OCZ has some nice stuff too.

Overall, the system will run wow just fine. You'll likely only get 60 FPS in Dalaran, and some areas won't do more then 30-40 FPS on any system; that's just how the city is built, with so much open space and such high polygon counts. You'll run any instance fine, even with the other accounts running too.

[Devitor]

carbs mentioned the monitor setup with crossfire, just remember that if you do it without crossfire you have use of all the ports in the back for monitors, but if you run crossfire you lose the use of the bottom card, the ports are not useable.

As far as if this system will work for you, yes. assuming you don't skimp on your internet, looking at the parts I assume you wouldn't, you should be just fine.

I do think the 12gb of ram is overkill though, shouldn't need more than 6gb in my opinion, but its your build do what you want. A good thing to note though is the OS, if you are going to run that much ram you can not use a 32-bit OS. To run that much ram I would suggest windows home premium or windows professional, 64-bit. Both of those will support that much ram, and if you optimized them properly they run very smooth.

Well I'll get off my soap-box. Have a good system build.

[Lostwalker]

Thanks for all the replys.

I agree and plan to run 64-bit. The price for the ram is total cost for 12GB.

I do plan to over-clock the processor to at least 3.0 maybe up to 3.5. If I do go up to 3.5 what ram specs would be best to meet that, would 1866 still be over kill? I like the suggestion on going with just 6GB of ram to start, I can always get more if needed. Also, I plan to start with just one video card and then get a second if needed. if I get a second card, I read that Windows 7 allows you to better config the processor and video card to each account. This would be the reason for the second card, so I could just have it running the 4 slave accounts and have the option for a third monitor.

Thanks Again =)

[Tim]

Definitely stick with the i7 920, it is super fast and overclocks nicely.

Go with 6GB of DDR3 RAM for sure, plus it is cheap.

Get an aftermarket air CPU cooler, you will need it, plus you can OC to 3.6GHZ easily with it.

As far as video cards, whatever you get, do not SLI them, just run them separate and have 1 monitor on each one, then split your WoWs.

As far as motherboards, Gigabyte right now is ultra win. The more expensive one you listed is heavy and OC's better, but the cheaper one will do just fine. Both have dual-ROM BIOS I believe.

That powersupply is more than enough in watts, but you need to make sure you have the right power railings to support 2x graphic cards. You will need to match it up with your MOBO and GFX cards.

For HDs, go the 1.5TB Seagate routes ($99), and then get 1x128GB Patriot SSD (what I have), which is >250MB/sec and amazing.


With the above setup, 6GB RAM will play 5 easily, and if you bumped it to 12GB you could handle 10+ easily while playing TF2 while playing SC2.

[Lostwalker]

Hello Tim,

You added to the post about getting a 1x128GB Patriot SSD. Could you tell me how you set your's up?

Are you running all 5 WoW accounts off the SSD? Did you also load Windows onto the SSD?
Lastly, if you did load Windows and WoW onto the SSD, do you have to reboot your computer to play WoW off the SSD harddrive?

Sorry, I'm just not sure on how to setup the SSD for playing and running WoW.

Thanks
LW

[Ualaa]

Not really sure if Tim's operating system is on the SSD or not. I've got the 64GB version of the same drive, which is a bit slower but is otherwise very close to the same drive.

In my case, I have warcraft (one install) on the SSD, and that's pretty much it. I boot up windows on my regular raptor drive. The shortcut is on my desktop, but points to the wow folder which is on the SSD. Don't need to reboot or any such thing.

It's basically another hard drive. No different then booting up from C Drive, but having the game on D Drive. Except that the seek time is 100x faster and the sequential reads are 5-10x faster depending on the SSD and the drive you were using before.