25man raiding with bad PC

[Cyrops]

My previous suggestion of an i3-4330 + Board + PSU ought to definitely do this for about that price, if not less.

Like @chazus said:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-4330 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor (€124.90 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Motherboard: Asus H81M-A Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (€60.56 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Power Supply: XFX ProSeries 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (€44.90 @ Caseking)
Total: €230.36
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-20 11:46 CET+0100)

Fits perfectly in the budget for ugprades. I chose Asus mobo but you can get cheaper Asrock for 47e

[AeneasBK]

Yeah, see... That's the thing. A lot of people don't consider that playable. That's why people get higher end systems for raiding. Certainly not everyone can just go out and drop 500 on an upgrade, or 900 on a new system... But from my experience on the forums, very few people are 'happy' with 20-30.

And no, the OP is looking to move -out- of that range. A lot of people have stated that their raid performance improved with a large FPS boost.

I guess it depends on what you are used to - I raided with 3-10 fps for TBC and Wrath up to ICC when I bought an upgrade. Going from not being able to see past the first room in ICC from fogging to seeing Marrogar from the entrance room was quite a step up. The most immediate thing I noticed in an encounter was being able to see the firebombs the snobolds throw in ToC. But I ramble... my point was I think ppl will play whatever their computer can provide unless they've experienced noticably better performance already. I could NEVER play this game at 3-10fps again; but I did it for years without complaint...

The bolded bit could not be more true. You can't avoid mechanics if you can't see them!

[Cyrops]

The bolded bit could not be more true. You can't avoid mechanics if you can't see them!

True, even Blizz did some hotfixes to make 'fire' more visible on low settings for people with weak PC's.
I played on 'custom medium' settings for over 6 years on 30fps average, I don't think you need more FPS to make gameplay smoother, wow is pretty forgiving in that regard and you only need to adjust a few setting to make stuff you need to avoid visible.