Is it true that you need to spend at least around $900 for Ultra settings in a raid?

[Jagei]

A reliable poster on the WoW forums said WoD increased the System requirements much more than the last two expansions or something like that and that the days of playing WoW on a toaster are over lol..

Needless to say that was disappointing because around April 2014 of last year I bought a computer for around $500 if I remember correctly and it played WoW amazingly at the time. I did get it for a good deal and was hoping I could snag another good deal for around that price but it seems that may not be the case?

I sold that computer months ago(foolishly) and need a new one.

[mittacc]

Instead of buying two 500 USD computers in the time span of a year you could've simply bought one for 1k instead and had it lasting for years?

[Jagei]

I sold the first one months ago which is why I am in need of a new one, I'll edit that into the post.

[Mormolyce]

$900 for the whole rig or the graphics card alone?

My rig is pretty damn old and it ran 25m raids on ultra just fine. In fact I've never turned my graphics settings down as long as I've been playing.

[Jagei]

$900 for the whole rig or the graphics card alone?

My rig is pretty damn old and it ran 25m raids on ultra just fine. In fact I've never turned my graphics settings down as long as I've been playing.

Ya, for the whole rig. Well she actually said 1 grand lol.The one she built cost her $1800 so maybe her expectations are higher lol. How much would you say is necessary for comfortable(not perfect) Ultra raiding?

[chazus]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Bk3XZL

$615 without windows. Will run Ultra without issues.

[Jagei]

Ty ty >:-)))

[lloose]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Bk3XZL

$615 without windows. Will run Ultra without issues.

Replace the 750ti with a gtx 960 for about $60 more and you have a great system overall, not just for wow.

[Mormolyce]

If you have the money I recommend spending around $1-1.5k on a system, generally speaking that's about the point where the cost/performance curve plateaus out.

But if it's just WoW, really doesn't matter.

[Jagei]

Thanks guys.

[Ardrak]

I think you should invest in a SSD to have your OS load times much quicker and put a few games that you play most often (like WoW) to load faster.
You can then store other games and files on the HDD.

[Saphyron]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant


CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($219.95 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($28.75 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($74.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($61.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($86.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($51.88 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 960 2GB Video Card ($209.99 @ Amazon)
Case: NZXT Source 210 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($29.98 @ OutletPC)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $799.50
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-23 09:58 EST-0500

Spend the extra cash and get one that will run most if not all games on the market pretty well.

[Vash The Stampede]

You could build a computer for $500 and last a good 4-5 years, but you have to know what you're buying. For example a G3258 with a 750 Ti is a good investment now, but it's by no means future proof. It'll run WoW just fine with max settings but what about WOTLK 2.0 or Cataclysm 2.0? There's no telling what Blizzard games might require.

Dual core CPUs are considered functional but ancient. The first dual core CPU is the Athlon 64 X2 in 2005, so to own a dual core CPU today seems kinda backwards. The goes for the 750 Ti since it's a 128-bit card. Very fast and efficient but that 128-bit bandwidth will come to bite you in the future, where you'll be forced to turn off AA completely and maybe lower resolutions from 1080P.

A good example of a long lasting setup is the i5 2500k was released in 2011 and still recommended for most games today. Will likely last another 2 years with some minor overclocking. A Radeon 6850 from 2010 is still a capable gaming graphics card and probably has another year or two as well.

This machine for example is about $550 and will likely last you 4 years. It's not a 4690k or GTX 970 but will be just as good.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor ($166.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Biostar Hi-Fi B85S3+ Ver. 6.x Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($58.00 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($61.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($52.00 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 270 2GB Dual-X Video Card ($136.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Antec GX500 ATX Mid Tower Case ($24.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $535.95
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-23 12:07 EST-0500

[Pharstar]

This may be unpopular to mention but I'm taking the risk anyway. Mmo's, WoW included, really only use 1 cpu core and a bit of a second. You can see this clearly in other mmo's where people "park" their cores to force the 1st 1 or 2 to do the brunt of the work. Anyway, you can play ultra in 25mans with the new Intel Pentium G3258 (unlocked) for ~$65 if you get a decent mobo and even a cheap air cooler and overclock it. This is the single best way to get high fps in WoW. A lot of people reject this idea saying it's not "future-proofing", you can't play other titles, it has no multi-threading, on and on. I'll just say that I bought a $900 system based on this and spent an extra $100-$150 on stuff I could have gotten cheaper (like case, cooler, fans, large SSD, etc). This build: G3258, Asrock OC Formula M mobo, and an air cooler + a gtx 750ti got 65-90 fps on ultra in 25mans, Bear in mind, even though this chip does not have multi threading, my kid played iTunes, had vent open, and a page web browsing at the same time and did absolutely fine in game. I agree with lloose about getting a gtx 960, I couldn't disagree more with Momolyce, you do NOT need to spend $1k -1.5k. In fact you could buy 2 of these for 1.5k.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L1irtUW1V8
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Pharst%C3%85r/saved/4ct48d
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2389948

Good luck. Also, this is just a very basic idea post. this is what we went with for my kid's build and he is super happy with it. You can also have $ to spend elsewhere, say on a nicer monitor, or your car note (lol) if you go with a good price/performance build like this. Time's are a changing-we need to max our $ efficiently.

[Warrax]

The Pentium G3258 (specially overclocked) is more than capable to play WoW in raids since WoW use no more than 2 cores. However an i5 is more future proof and let you take advantage of multi-thread games. Instead of the GeForce 750ti, I recommend the GeForce 960 which is a similar card but a tad more powerful.

[TaintedOne]

It'll run WoW just fine with max settings but what about WOTLK 2.0 or Cataclysm 2.0? There's no telling what Blizzard games might require.

At blizzcon and a few times during WOD beta blizzard made some comments about taking some of the work load off the cpu and putting it on the gpu in the next xpac.

So as for wow cpu requirements I would expect it to remain similar to wod for the next few expansions but as you said you never know with blizzard :P

[insmek]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Bk3XZL

$615 without windows. Will run Ultra without issues.

Unless WoW is truly that Nvidia favored, I can't imagine this actually running Ultra at 60FPS.The CPU is certainly good enough, but I've got a 4790K with a pair of R9 270s in Crossfire, and I don't even pull 60FPS at 1080p 100% of the time. With just one card it's more like 35-55 FPS or so in busier areas, with less so in raids. And one R9 270 is quite a bit stronger of a GPU than the 750ti.

[chazus]

Unless WoW is truly that Nvidia favored, I can't imagine this actually running Ultra at 60FPS.The CPU is certainly good enough, but I've got a 4790K with a pair of R9 270s in Crossfire, and I don't even pull 60FPS at 1080p 100% of the time. With just one card it's more like 35-55 FPS or so in busier areas, with less so in raids. And one R9 270 is quite a bit stronger of a GPU than the 750ti.

The GPU is entirely irrelevant. The 750ti is simply a good, solid, budget card. Your R9 270's perform better than the 750ti, but not in WoW, not in raids. The one I posted, and your setup, are more or less identical in performance when it comes to WoW raids.

[Pharstar]

Yeah and the 65-90 fps was a range of stand stills vs fights, but he did get that. I since have given him my former gtx 770. His cpu was oc'd to 4.5ghz at the time on air cooling- very, very good air cooling, but air nonetheless.

[chronia]

I really wonder how ppl get 90-65 stable FPS with a G3258 and a 750Ti in raids though on Ultra as claimed here, i run a 4670K @ 4.6 Ghz with a GTX970 and for certain in raids my FPS will dip below 60 in raids in certain situations, it will even dip below 30 if theres like 2 raids killing a world boss. I also wouldn't say that GPU is irrelevant in WoW, whilst not as important as in other games, all my GPU upgrades the last 10 years have allways given me a FPS increase in WoW, not as much as CPU upgrades, but the difference is still there.