WoW Rookie: A computer to love WoW with
by Lisa Poisso 
Sep 29th 2009 at 6:00PM
WoW Rookie has already answered the first question asked by so many new players when they realize "You know, I think I'd like to have my own characters and my own account -- but will my computer run WoW?" This week, we'll burrow into the next level: "We've been engaged for months now. I'm in love, I'm committed, I'm of legal age (level 80, baby!) and I'm ready to drop some cash. What should I be looking for in a computer system to settle down in?"
If you're not into PvP, you may have missed PvP specialist Zach Yonzon's excellent series this summer on gearing up for PvP. But wait -- this is no in-game gear guide. Surprise! It's a look at the best hardware for running World of Warcraft. Whether you enjoy PvP or PvE content, here's a look at the gear that'll deliver the eye-popping, mind-blowing, mouse-clicking madness you crave for endgame WoW performance.
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A computer you'll love playing WoW on World of Warcraft is an extremely demanding game that goes well beyond the recommended requirements if you want flawless gameplay. It should come as no surprise that so-called gaming PCs tout the best processors, oodles of memory and the fastest graphics cards. If you can afford it, play on a machine that is several notches above the recommended requirements. |
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Gaming mice More than your keyboard, your mouse is your most important gaming peripheral. For laptop users, who will more often than not use the default keyboard built-in to their machine, dedicated gaming keyboards are a luxury rather than a necessity. Furthermore, PvP enthusiasts necessarily learn to move with a mouse, which makes it a worthy investment. |
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Gaming surfaces and keyboards Some gaming surfaces cater to specific types of play styles, such as rougher surfaces for more control or smoother surfaces for speed. Some are bigger for low sensitivity gamers who make long, sweeping motions, while others are smaller for portability and a gracious footprint. Find something that suits your play style. Just as with mice, World of Warcraft isn't incredibly demanding on keyboards. The game is robust enough to register a wide array of commands and macros using a conventional keyboard. This means that any ordinary keyboard can be tailored for complex gameplay using either the built-in key bindings and macros feature or with the help of add-ons like Bartender. Does this mean specialized keyboards are a waste of money? Not necessarily. |
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Sound systems and headsets For general gaming purposes, your computer's default sound system should really do fine. On the other hand, if you're serious about your gaming, you might want to invest in a good headset. If you normally play at home and have the luxury of playing indiscreetly, a great sound system is an awesome thing to have. |
What works best for you?
The beauty of the internet is that little blank box below: the comments, where we can share our collective experience. We can pass on tips about gear we've actually kissed in delight versus gear we'd like to crush with a sledge hammer.
One disclaimer, though, before we start swapping recommendations: comments on posts about hardware notoriously degenerate into scuffles over whose rigs and IT credentials are the hottest. Opinions and insights are warmly welcome and appreciated -- but no e-peen contests, please. Let's help new WoW players compile a variety of resources and ideas for upgrading and targetting a WoW machine they'll fall in love with.
WoW Rookie walks you through all sort of new-player concerns, from game lingo for the beginner to joining your first guild as a mid-level player and on to what to do when you finally hit level 80. Visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide for links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's.Filed under: Tips, Features, WoW Rookie, Hardware
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Josh Sep 29th 2009 6:07PM
I love my wireless headset, when i die in a raid i can run off to the kitchen and get a drink or something and still know whats going on.
Brunesgoth Sep 30th 2009 6:10AM
mind sharing the love of what it is and where can i buy it from?
Ozmodius Sep 29th 2009 6:08PM
The gear is nice, but the PC's stats can easily be replicated or beaten by building your own for far less money.
Shapermc Sep 29th 2009 6:17PM
I completely agree with you. I've built two gaming PCs for less than the price of one pre-built "gaming PC" that may not perform quite as well, but perform well enough to max out the resolution and settings in WoW. While WoW is graphic intensive, it still pales to the intensity many other games require.
Tom Sep 29th 2009 8:18PM
Building it yourself is indeed cheeper, assuming these items are not worth anything to you:
1. Time. It will take time to assemble the machine, load an operating system, and so on. And this all assumes you have the skill to do so without damaging any parts.
2. Support. If something goes wrong, who do you contact for assistance?
3. Warranty. Sure, the parts will each have their own warranty, but that means more time dealing with troubleshooting to find out exactly who to call.
4. Operating system and other software. Most build it yourself people leave the cost of software out. If a person wants to have a legal setup, this is important.
5. Quality. Many times, low end "cheep" components are going to cause issues, or make the system really loud, or other issues.
I built my own machines for a while when I was interested in tinkering, and they served my needs fine. I no longer do so because the stuff I'd like to tinker with is outside the home PC realm now, and I just want to buy a box, plug it in, and be done with it.
As for upgradability, there really isn't any with either path. If you build it yourself, sure, you might be able to reuse the case for a new build. But odds are, some new CPU generation will come out, requiring a new motherboard, that then requires new RAM, a new power supply, and so on. That hard drive from 4 years ago is going to be small by todays standards.
Ozmodius Sep 29th 2009 8:27PM
Even with the cost of buying a new OS and using high quality parts its still cheaper. I also find it more satisfying to do it myself.
I also like knowing off the bat what the upgrade limits are on what I'm working with.
My current rig allows me to run WoW with 8GB of RAM but the motherboard and OS have a limit of 16 GM so if WoW cranks up its graphics with the next XPAC I'm not stuck with a 2 chip-slot motherboard like most off-the-shelf PCs are.
Sparcrypt Sep 30th 2009 1:01AM
@tom
Honestly it's not that hard for people to learn. I taught myself about computer hardware when I was about 12 and this was well over a decade ago, before every home had a PC and WELL before every home had a gaming PC.
Step 1: Put it together - Motherboard, RAM, CPU, GPU, hard drive and you're done. Granted the first time you do it might take you a while and possibly require some help or research of your own but honestly it's not that hard and once you've done it once you learn pretty quick.
Step 2: Install your OS. For most, Windows XP is still the correct choice. Put in the CD and let it run. Once it's done, either visit the vendor sites and install the latest drivers (something you rarely get when buying a premade) or just use the included CDs. Again, stick it in and watch it run.
You now have a PC at the same level you would have if you bought it premade, only far cheaper. When trying to figure out the price difference, consider this: I built my machine for about $1800(AU) or so a couple years ago. A guy from work bought a pre-made gaming machine and paid about $3500 (AU). I'm talking high end machines here, not just 'will play WoW'.
Thats a price difference of $1700(AU)... now I can go from a box of bits to a finished machine in a few hours, mostly waiting for installs to happen, but for first timers you'll probably be looking at a full day to get to the stage you would had you bought a premade machine, maybe more if you have problems. I sure as all hell don't get paid 1700 bucks a day - if you do, then I'm sure you can more then afford to buy premade machines. For the rest of us, it's worth learning.
So... would you rather spend a day doing it yourself, or spend 2 weeks wages for someone else to do it for you? You also get to learn new skills doing it on your own which is always nice.
Your points about warranties etc are valid, but again, the 10 minutes you spent sorting that out are much better value then the cost of someone else doing it (ringing, getting an RA and mailing it really is not such a big deal and you wait the same time no matter who does it).
So yeah.. it's all no doubt a pain to learn if things dont go to play the first time, but after that it's a breeze and you save a fortune.
QQinsider Sep 30th 2009 5:17AM
"5. Quality. Many times, low end "cheep" components are going to cause issues, or make the system really loud, or other issues. "
You are far more likely to have these problems in a pre-built PC in my experience. If you build your own PC you choose the quality of every single component. Large PC companies do not choose e.g. cooling solutions based on how quiet they are, they choose them based on cost.
Deerfoot Sep 30th 2009 10:35AM
I recently replaced my rig and when I went to get all the parts to build my own, it actually worked out that it was cheaper to buy a pre-built than to build it myself from the same parts by about $900, due to a sale. On top of that, many of the parts I wanted from my beloved and trusted computer store were on backorder due to popularity so I was able to get that prebuilt faster as well.
resa1983 Sep 30th 2009 10:43AM
Definitely build yourself - its cheaper, and you tend to learn a LOT about your machine. Makes it easier to troubleshoot issues later on down the road.
You'll want a tri/quad/i7 as close to 3.0ghz as possible, 4gig ram, and a good graphics card - nvidia 9800gtx / ati 4850 - or better if you want to run Ultra Settings.
But if you DO decide to buy, do NOT buy the Dell XPS 630i machine. Its unstable in wow, and Dell can't be bothered to find the cause of the problem with the machine. We know its a hardware issue (we're suspecting a bad mobo), but can't be sure.
shineymcshine79 Sep 29th 2009 6:15PM
When it's all said and done, WoW is not a very demanding game to run. By today's standards anyway. In an ideal world, you'd want plenty of RAM and at least a half decent graphics card but even if you cant afford all that extra memory or that shiny new graphics card, to give you some idea, I'm currently running WoW quite well on a very, very sub-standard laptop with a whopping (*snort*) 1Gb of RAM. Sure, the graphics are turned down, Dalaran is quite laggy at times and frame rates suck when there's a substantial gathering of people on screen, but at the moment while I'm between decent gaming systems, I gotta say, it does the job and does it quite well considering. My point being, you don't need to drop a load of cash to run this game, far from it.
Kinu64 Sep 29th 2009 6:30PM
I would love to see a recomened low cost laptop that would run wow. I have been playing on a subpar laptop for years now and want to upgrade to something shiney. Not looking to be super cheap, maybe around 600-800. Any recomendations?
metalspawned Sep 29th 2009 7:01PM
I posted about the Asus G51vx-RX05 a bit below. It's a bit above your stated price range, but it is a very nice machine. If you're willing to spend a bit extra on something snazzier, definitely check it out. Good luck on your search. :-)
Nick Sep 29th 2009 8:41PM
I just bought a refurbished Toshiba Satellite (L305D-S5934) for $420 (with tax and shipping). It has a dual core AMD Turion X2 2.0GHz processor, 3GB of RAM (that I upgraded to 4GB for another $40), 250GB of HD space, and an integrated ATi X3100 video card. It runs WoW like a champ. 40FPS most places, 20FPS in Dal. It has some trouble with heavy spell effects, and I have to keep the shadows simple, but it runs great.
Alan Sep 30th 2009 8:53AM
heck, i'm running wow on an old Acer Aspire 3630 with 700mb of RAM and a Celeron M with XP and i can still run it.
Jelement Sep 29th 2009 6:17PM
I put together two new computers a little less than two months ago for my wife and I. These are multipurpose machines as they're used for our home office as well as gaming (not just WoW). But they're excellent for WoW and should meet requirements of other games for a good while without upgrades. I buy everything from newegg and try to get their combo deals when possible.
Antec 300 Case
OCZ StealthXStream 700W PSU
Gigabyte MA790X-UD4O mobo
AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black (many of these can unlock to quad core)
G.Skill 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 1066
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB graphics card
WD Caviar Black 640GB HD
LG DVD Burner (SATA)
Acer 23" HDMI 1080P widescreen LCD
Total cost to my door was $1597.26 (including wireless cards and other small things like thermal grease). This was for 2 systems so each one was $798.63.
For $800 you'd be hard pressed to do much better, though everyone has their opinion.
I have since also added a Razer Lycosa keyboard to replace my old Logitech G15, and I still use an older MX510 mouse, and a plantronics .Audio 550 headset that is a couple years old now (highly recommended over Logitech headsets that seem to be of lesser quality)
Disclaimer: I am not an AMD and/or ATI fanboy. I usually build with Intel/Nvidia setups but went this route for a better balance of value and performance.
TL:DR - build your own computer...if that seems scary see if you know someone who can help you.
frozndevl Sep 29th 2009 6:29PM
What about operating system cost and all the other software?
smcn Sep 29th 2009 6:58PM
The only software you should ever have to pay for is the OS and games. You can get Vista for $99 from Newegg which includes a free upgrade to Windows 7. I recently built a CrossFire/QuadCore rig via Newegg for $1800, which included absolutely everything including an HD monitor and would have cost hundreds more from a retailer.
Sehvekah Sep 29th 2009 7:06PM
TL/DR, software costs are a non-issue, OS is sometimes an issue, but not too expensive.
OS cost is typically about $99-$199(OEM basic or "premium" versions, respectively), though it's sometimes possible to use a version from a preexisting computer/build. This depends on who you bought your old computer from. Smaller stores and custom boutique places tend to use OEM versions of windows that'll install just fine into any working rig you can build. Larger places like Dell use branded disks that'll check your hardware for the companies proprietary BIOS, and refuse to install if they don't find it(this can be bypassed, but it's not always easy, or technically legal depending on local laws). Other software costs are only relevant if your old software doesn't work on your new machine/OS AND there's no free alternative, which for the average home user/gamer is rarely an issue(they're either using the free stuff in the first place, or the software bundles from the old computer install on the new rig without issue, or the old computer still works and can be used to run the old software).
And why am I assuming that there's older software/hardware/copies of the OS laying around? Because people who assemble their own machines tend to do so *after* they've bought a prebuilt system they've tinkered with, fixed or upgraded and found that it's not as hard or scary as some people seem to think it is.
Jelement Sep 30th 2009 1:33AM
Well, you could say I put off OS costs for now. I was going to use the XP license from my old machine, but decided to go with the Windows 7 RC. Works great and I don't have to worry about picking up a license until March.