How 'low' would you go for a WoW build?

[Deleted]

Recently I have been running into a bit of a conundrum, which I would be curious to hear other people's opinion on. It can be distilled into the following question:

If asked by a friend or a relative to build a WoW gaming PC for them, how 'low' (in total price *and* performance) would you go and still feel you give them a decent bang for their buck?

The long story: Like many of you, I occasionally help friends and family members build dedicated gaming PCs. I won't claim I build dozens of them every year, but it does tend to be a few. We are talking machines, which at most are used for 1080p, if even that.

For a while my 'basic' build contained something similar to an i5-4690 + GTX960 plus all the customary trimmings, or something similar at the time of the build. Like a few years ago I built a fair few machine around the i5-3570 + GTX660Ti etc. These are machines, which are *never* OC'ed or otherwise modified, yet people generally seem very happy with them. For instance my nephew has one of the GTX660Ti machines and am still using it almost daily for semi-serious WoW raiding.

Recently I have run into an issue, with is the budget some people are able to afford. They are fed up with the lack of performance of their cheap laptop with integrated graphics, and am looking for something better. Frequently they have been given an old PC, which they hope I may be able to upgrade, yet it almost never happens that an even halfway useful gaming PC is given away. So mostly whatever they have on their hands is pretty useless. Maybe the case, the HDD and the PSU can be reused, but I have yet to see a nice Sandy Bridge gaming CPU with a fair motherboard, or something similar.

So usually we are talking about a complete build from scratch, which is where the problems start. The problem is that even with the most barecones CPU and graphics card imaginable, most of the budget is *still* going for all the rest of the machine, and the total cost ends up being too expensive. For light WoW raiding duty I wouldn't really feel comfortable building a machine with less than, say, an i3-4370 + GTX750. Below this the performance just plummets and isn't really worth the price of the machine IMO.

The table below is an attempt at showing the conundrum. The first column is normalized local prices in pseudo-Eurodollars, to show relative differences. These values are local component prices in DKK (Danish crowns) including VAT, rounded to the nearest 100 and divided by 10. Some of the groups shows possible alternatives, including 'enthusiast' level components for the sake of comparison.

Note that the prices given are not for a luxury build. On this scale a case like my Corsair 450D would be at '110' and a Corsair RM750i PSU comes in at 120.

The last figure, where applicable, is my attempt at showing the relative graphics oomph of a given GPU, relative to a integrated Intel 4600 GPU.

Do people agree that this sort of represent the absolute bottom of how much a gaming PC cost, meaning the point below which it doesn't really make sense to build a new machine for WoW? You can perhaps shave off both the SSD and even the ODD, but that is aboout it I think? Or, alternatively, am I overlooking an opportunity or two here, to make an even less costly build?

 80 : Windows 7/10 license.

 60 - ASRock H97M Anniversary
 80 - Asus Z97-P

 20 : 1x 4GB DDR3-1600
 40 : Case
 50 : PSU (?)
 40 : HDD, 1TB
 60 : SSD, 120GB
 15 : ODD

 90 - i3-4170 : 3.7GHz 3MB cache, 4400 graphics : 0.8
120 - i3-4370 HR : 3.8GHz 4MB cache, 4400 graphics : 0.8
110 - i3-4330 : 3.5GHz 4MB cache, 4600 graphics : 1
180 - i5-4690 HR : 3.5GHz, 6MB cache, quad, 4600: 1
270 - i7-4790K

 90 - GT740 : 2
100 - GTX750 : 4.5
110 - GTX750Ti : 5
170 - GTX960 : 9
290 - GTX970 : 12

[Deleted]

We have done this a few times already even for WoD with ppl that already build it and had reports of how good it plays too, not just assumptions. And that is in the forums here.

To give you a figure/sample of what it was look at the following and replace i3 with a G3258 if budget is even a little tighter. The verdict in short was that its not the best as you would get from an oced i5 but its still pretty decent on high settings, with shadow/sunshafts down while raiding.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor ($102.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-GAMING 3 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($59.88 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Mushkin Silverline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB Video Card ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1000 USB 3.0 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($24.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts Green 380W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($38.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $401.72
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-09-25 16:45 EDT-0400

[Deleted]

Super, thanks!

I must have missed previous discussions on this subject, despite being an active lurker here for years.

The bottom line I take from your reply is that yes, my hunch is more or less accurate as to what a minimum WoW build looks like, though possibly with a smaller CPU.

[Deleted]

Yes well, even with a 2core you want as high clocked cpu as you can get and intel only. The only difference as i mentioned is to go with a G3258 and a mobo that can allow that extra voltage for it to be overclocked. It was a good solution when it was at 50bucks. Now at 65 plus another 30-35 for an aftermarket air cooler you reach 100 which is the money of the i3.

Obviously if G3258 is at say 4.2 will play with good fps but will struggle if you get other things open while doing so. I consider the i3 a better solution when it comes to some money more or less without overclock hassles. Sometimes the i3 4170 is on sale and its cheaper than the 4160.

[Aori]

This is kind of an odd question.

With WoW, you can go as low as your budget needs to be and still play the game. Any $300-400(without OS) desktop is going to play just fine with settings tweaks.

[Deleted]

Yes well, even with a 2core you want as high clocked cpu as you can get and intel only. The only difference as i mentioned is to go with a G3258 and a mobo that can allow that extra voltage for it to be overclocked. It was a good solution when it was at 50bucks. Now at 65 plus another 30-35 for an aftermarket air cooler you reach 100 which is the money of the i3.

That is kind of what I was thinking as well. Tiny CPU plus, say, GT740 may in reality be worse than a larger CPU with 4600 graphics...

Obviously if G3258 is at say 4.2 will play with good fps but will struggle if you get other things open while doing so. I consider the i3 a better solution when it comes to some money more or less without overclock hassles. Sometimes the i3 4170 is on sale and its cheaper than the 4160.

This appear to be the case with my local distributor, which is why the i3-4170 ended up on my list.

- - - Updated - - -

With WoW, you can go as low as your budget needs to be and still play the game. Any $300-400(without OS) desktop is going to play just fine with settings tweaks.

Well, yes that is true. The point is that practically everyone already has a PC of some kind. Yet if a new desktop 'gaming PC' doesn't perform noticeably better than their current laptop, then the whole exercise is kind of pointless. What happens is often that people see either my own machine in action, or one of the others I've built. "Whoa! I want that!". Bringing that experience does cost a bit IMO, even if I tune a build down to better match a budget.

I haven't tried this myself recently, yet from what I am being told then a low cost laptop doesn't perform well in raids, regardless of settings. I'm suspecting many simply doesn't have much in the way of CPU power...