Colonel's Guide to Builds: Budget WoW-BFA Build

[col1kill]

Welcome, I'm Col1Kill.
I could list off every Degree and Cert I have that makes me qualified to write this guide but your here for help not to here me ramble about my education, SO lets get to it. (( NOTE: I hold degree's in computer science not grammar so please ignore minor spelling errors and grammar mistakes ))

This first build guide will be for the budget gamer looking to get into 1080P gaming such as WarCraft: BFA while having the option to upgrade later.

I will have a parts list and pcPartsPicker link (When I can post links) at the end.
ALL PRICES USD

CPU: Ryzen 3 2200G - To start lets get the new Ryzen APU, this unit has 4 CPU core & 8 AMD Vega GPU cores. This APU has come as a bit of an unexpected
power house for it's average $100.00 price tag. We will be building our system off of this as it provide good performance for its price and allows us to save money on a GPU and shift that to other components.

Mother Board: ASRock AB350m-HDV, MATX - For our Mother Board we will go with the ASRock AB350M-HDV, at $65.00 this board is a good value and comes with Ryzen 2000 compatible BIOS if bought from newegg. this allows us to save $100 on a board and still get all the features we want such as m.2 and over clocking. NOTE: remember to check the VRAM setting and make sure its set to 2 gig, some of these default to minimum which will make games run slow or be unable to launch also enable the memory profile other wise out ram will run at 2133. refer to the manual for how to check these settings on your board. NOTE: if your board has issues you may contact AMD for help in updating the BIOS, they will send you a loaner CPU for flashing the BIOS. Additionally if you have extra cash you can opt for an X470 board ( AS of writing this B450 boards are not out yet. )

Ram: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16G (2x8G) 3000MHz - This is the first item we are going to redirect that Graphic card money to, we are going to pick a 2x8G kit of ram. This memory configuration allows us to remove any possible Ram bottlenecks that 8G would present when using an APU, as for the speed we are choosing 3000MHz because our APU will be calling for data from system memory, therefor we want that memory to be as fast as possible. Now you'r most likely asking " why not 3200 or faster? " or why 2 sticks? " well to answer the first, while Ryzen and APU's love faster ram, these APU's have been known to get flaky above 3000MHz so we are going to cap it there for compatibility. as for why 2 sticks? well this is to improve performance via dual channel, I could try to explain this in detail but this section is long enough, put simply it doubles the memory bandwidth allowing for faster data transfer, super short = more FPS. at $165.00 this is the most expensive item on the list.

Storage: WD Blue 1TB HDD - As we are on a budget we will go with this for now, at $45.00 its a good value but its a bit slow ... lets fix that. To speed us this drive we are going to " Short Stroke " it, when installing windows it will ask where to install to and have an option to adjust the size, we what to set the size to 122800 MB this will give us a 120GB logical partition for windows, while we are here lets go ahead and allocate the rest to one bulk drive. Now your most likely asking " WHY!!! " well what we are doing is isolating a small section of the drive from the rest, this will make this section faster helping off set the slow nature of Mechanical drives. REMEMBER install Windows on the smaller partition.

Case: Corsair SPEC 02 - Its a case ... at $60 this case is a nice value and has a filtered front intake to help with dust.

Power Supply: EVGA 500B, 500W - for a PSU we are going with a 500 watt EVGA, this is a good unit with power to spare for a future GPU upgrade. I personally use EVGA and use them at work and at $35.00 it's a great value.

Optical drive: (OPTIONAL) Samsung SH-224GB/BSBE DVD/CD writer - At $15.00 this is a good option if you still want an optical drive, which our chosen case supports.

OS: Windows 10 Home - As Microsoft has chosen to lock out support for Ryzen on Windows 7 and 8 we will have to used Windows 10. at $100 Windows 10 Home is all we need for gaming.

This build totals in at just under $600 before any taxes.

World of Warcraft Suggested Settings ( 1080P ): for settings lets aim for 60FPS as consistently as possible while still having so decent eye candy. so to start lets turn all settings to good and AA to FX low.

Now lets turn Shadow Quality, Liquid Detail and Sunshafts to fair, next lets turn off SSAO, this setting gives us very little and often cost us several FPS. Now lets set Texture Filtering to 4x. Finally lets set view distance to 7 wile setting Environmental Detail and Ground clutter to 5.

Other Games: aim for medium setting with features like SSAO off and using FXAA or no AA. each game will be different so adjust setting until you like how each game plays.

Text List

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 3 2200G 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($94.99 Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350M-HDV Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($64.63 Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($164.99 Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($44.00 Amazon)
Case: Corsair - SPEC-02 ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA - 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($38.98 Newegg)
Optical Drive: Samsung - SH-224GB/BSBE DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 Amazon)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($99.99 Amazon)
Total: $582.56

[Fascinate]

This will run WoW a lot better for less money, 16gb's of ram is not necessary in a budget build:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i3-8100 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor ($115.92 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte - B360M DS3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($65.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: ADATA - XPG GAMMIX D10 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Team - L5 LITE 3D 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GTX 1050 2GB ACX 2.0 Video Card ($149.99 @ B&H)
Case: Cooler Master - MasterBox Q300L MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($38.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA - BT 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($24.99 @ B&H)
Total: $525.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-05-09 15:47 EDT-0400

You can find windows 10 keys on ebay for less than 5 dollars

[col1kill]

This will run WoW a lot better for less money, 16gb's of ram is not necessary in a budget build:

You can find windows 10 keys on ebay for less than 5 dollars

while yours is not a bad build lets adjust a couple of my parts be equal to your

first, if you go with your suggestion and get our windows key from less than reputable sources we can remove the $99.99
Adjusted Price: $483.56
Now how about we go with your suggested ram kit. we can reduce the Ram price by another $85.
Adjust price $398.56
If we chose a case priced the same as the one you chose we can save another $21
Adjusted price $377.56

Total adjusted price difference $148.30, now we can get that graphic card or save this money until it grows and get our self a much better graphic solution than any of these builds offer later when prices are better or when one pops up on ebay.

Now lets compare the CPU's, the CPU side of these chips are within 10% of each other on average at stock speeds with the intel being just faster. that said the intel is locked where the AMD is unlocked, allowing the AMD to be overclocked. NEXT lets look at upgrade path. the intel build will be locked to 8th gen CPU's MAYBE 9th if intel is nice, the AMD build as stated by AMD will be supported until 2020, allowing upgrades to newer CPU with only a BIOS update needed. Finally lets look at integrated GPU, in this category its a curb stomping, the AMD Vega cores walk all over intel graphics.

Storage: this is a push, your choice of a 240G SSD is a valid option and will be faster even with my HDD being short stroked; However, it lacks capacity limiting the total amount of Data the person can hold.

Conclusion: when adjusting the original build to more closely match the core components offered in your build my build still come out as the better budget build, if we add in the GTX 1050 we get 2 builds on different platforms with will offer the same performance. so none of these 3 builds is a bad choice, that said when I compiled this list I did it with the target of giving the first time buyer/builder the best base to start from that would offer good performance, the best upgrade path, and the least number of possible complications.

Subnote: in my build I explained 16G was to remove a possible ram bottle neck when using the Ryzen APU, remember it will use upto 2G of ram, windows uses on average 2G leaving 4G for games and programs to run.

[Fascinate]

while yours is not a bad build lets adjust a couple of my parts be equal to your

first, if you go with your suggestion and get our windows key from less than reputable sources we can remove the $99.99
Adjusted Price: $483.56
Now how about we go with your suggested ram kit. we can reduce the Ram price by another $85.
Adjust price $398.56
If we chose a case priced the same as the one you chose we can save another $21
Adjusted price $377.56

Total adjusted price difference $148.30, now we can get that graphic card or save this money until it grows and get our self a much better graphic solution than any of these builds offer later when prices are better or when one pops up on ebay.

Now lets compare the CPU's, the CPU side of these chips are within 10% of each other on average at stock speeds with the intel being just faster. that said the intel is locked where the AMD is unlocked, allowing the AMD to be overclocked. NEXT lets look at upgrade path. the intel build will be locked to 8th gen CPU's MAYBE 9th if intel is nice, the AMD build as stated by AMD will be supported until 2020, allowing upgrades to newer CPU with only a BIOS update needed. Finally lets look at integrated GPU, in this category its a curb stomping, the AMD Vega cores walk all over intel graphics.

Storage: this is a push, your choice of a 240G SSD is a valid option and will be faster even with my HDD being short stroked; However, it lacks capacity limiting the total amount of Data the person can hold.

Conclusion: when adjusting the original build to more closely match the core components offered in your build my build still come out as the better budget build, if we add in the GTX 1050 we get 2 builds on different platforms with will offer the same performance. so none of these 3 builds is a bad choice, that said when I compiled this list I did it with the target of giving the first time buyer/builder the best base to start from that would offer good performance, the best upgrade path, and the least number of possible complications.

Subnote: in my build I explained 16G was to remove a possible ram bottle neck when using the Ryzen APU, remember it will use upto 2G of ram, windows uses on average 2G leaving 4G for games and programs to run.

WoW is a different animal, it just dislikes AMD processing cores. A max overclocked ryzen APU with the same video card as one with an 8100 will be 20-30% slower in WoW, i really dont have an explanation for this other than some people tell me WoW still uses an intel compiler which heavily nerfs AMD performance.

Pay attention to how low the FPS is in dalaran at the start of the video, a core i3 8100 would be at least 20 fps higher maybe more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYl5O2DI7Sg

Ryzen APU's are actually incredible parts for the money, its just not something id ever recommend for a WoW player.

[col1kill]

WoW is a different animal, it just dislikes AMD processing cores. A max overclocked ryzen APU with the same video card as one with an 8100 will be 20-30% slower in WoW, i really dont have an explanation for this other than some people tell me WoW still uses an intel compiler which heavily nerfs AMD performance.

Pay attention to how low the FPS is in dalaran at the start of the video, a core i3 8100 would be at least 20 fps higher maybe more:


Ryzen APU's are actually incredible parts for the money, its just not something id ever recommend for a WoW player.

yes in cities FPS will drop and intel CPU's do have a slight lead; However, his settings in that video raise a few questions, first Eviro detail and clutter were set to 10, FXAA was High, and his memory was running under DDR4 spec at a snails pace of 1600MHZ which is well below the default of 2133MHz. So while your point is 100% accurate that video does raise a few questions and until I get an answer from him on the memory speed I feel is misrepresents the chip.

NOTE: it's possible the ram is running at 3200 and is just showing as 1600 because of dual channel but I am not going to assume that.

UPDATE: after talking with him the software is reading the 3200 as 1600 because of dual channeling. I thought this was the case but I wanted to make sure.

[Sorshen]

I'm sorry, but right off the bat I noticed you're recommending a mainboard w/o vrm heatsinks on a Ryzen 2X00G. Bad build.

[col1kill]

I'm sorry, but right off the bat I noticed you're recommending a mainboard w/o vrm heatsinks on a Ryzen 2X00G. Bad build.

while the lack of VRM heatsinks is not ideal its not a " Bad build " because of it. at stock voltage or overvoltage upto about 1.325v with the down firing stock heatsink slowing air across the VRM it will be alright. Also if you took the time to read it was chosen because of its price AND a 300 series board thats 2000 series ready.

All that said if VRM heatsinks are critical for you the ASRock AB350M Pro4 averages $74.99, has VRM heatsinks and is also Ryzen 2000 ready ... when you can find it in stock.