Hi guys. Please see the attached image, I was hoping for some advice, I am a WoW player mostly who sold his desktop for an AMD APU dual graphics laptop to cut down. The problem is I have more time to play now and my girlfriend wants to play as well, most of all, I cannot get used to the small profile/screen of my laptop.
With its dual graphics (APU 8650 + 2GB 8750m) the laptop does ok, playing at 1366x768, low to medium settings at 30-80fps.
I want to get back to a desktop screen and reduce my drops to under 60fps as much as possible with medium to high settings. The trick I have a $1000 AUD budget which I can stretch maybe $100 extra and I have a keyboard/speakers/headset already.
I work in the cloud/virtualisation industry so the extra cores of the fx6300 helps for things like vmware and I can always throw an extra 8gb of RAM and big slow storage disk in later on.
It looks good to me. I'd spend a few more dollars and get a Hyper 212 Plus at least. You can also save a few dollars going with an R9 270 instead of the 270x version, but that isn't a huge deal.
I assume you aren't worried about storage space. If you're planning on using an older drive in the system I'd say a 120GB SSD would be plenty for your OS, programs, and a few games including WoW. If not, you might need the extra capacity.
I hate the Gigabyte GPUs and I've shied away from Asrock lately, but neither are inherently bad.
well the problem with world of war craft, is that this game is very bad optimized to use multiple cores, it only uses one, thats why, you not get your best performance on an AMD cpu. im affraid that upgrading to a FX6300 will not give you much of an performance boost in that game.
If you are a hardcore wow player then go intel, The only thing what is important, is the virtualization part, intel K cpu´s don´t have vt-d support, this makes them not realy ideal for virtualization.
If I stretch the budget a little further to my absolute maximum I can build the below machine for $1320.
From a work/visualization point of view this machines far better, more ram, more cores, happier VM's. I have also swapped the motherboard out for something of better quality (VRM heatsinks) and opted for a 4GB variant of the 270x to help future proof a little, trying to help with high texture games.
I really can't go beyond this price point at all, what do you think? The cooler by the way is just to be a step better than stock, I have no intention overclocking, I want reliability more than anything as the machine is likely to be on roughly 4 of 7 days during the week.
The only thing I would do later is add a second disk (2TB mechanical). I need the 250GB SSD as I want to run WoW and all of my applications off of it, I currently consume around 130GB on my laptops local disk.
Go intel/nvidia, or for the same money get a HIS iceq 280x, much better than the 270.
I have 3.4 haswell i7 and I can tell you vmware workstation flies with as little as 8gb you can run the game in 2 virtual windows 7s with no problems while playing on the host windows. (while rendering a movie).An i5 is just as good in WoW.
You'd be a fool to waste money like that. If you don't need a better graphics card for other games besides wow then sure a 270 is enough for 1080p. In this case get an i7 haswell-R with a z97 motherboard and more RAM (it never hurts, more is better) for your rig. Just research beforehand to see how the motherboard fares with 4 slots occupied and price prognosis.
Note: I already had the keyboard/mouse, speakers and headphones.
I am happy with the low power consumption of the i5 and should get the performance I am after in WoW, I went for the 4GB GPU as it was only $6 more than the 2GB and I got some fast C9 HyperX Beast memory; all in a small mATX form factor (win for lan travel).
I don't plan to overclock (yet, I will later of course) and I would change the CPU cooler when the time comes, the TX3 was meant as a slight upgrade to the stock cooler. The only other thing I will add eventually is add a large mechanical disk (probably 2x2TB mirrored).
Dont grab a K cpu from intel, for virtualization, cause you miss he vt-d extension.
AMD is MUCH better then an intel K cpu for virtualization. if you are an professional vm ware user at least grab a cpu with all the virtualization feutures.
since you are an wow player, intel is a better choice, but dont grab an K series cpu, if you are an professional vm-ware user, offcourse you know what im talking about then ;)
also not to mention for fully virtualization support on intel you basicly want a Q87 or Q97 chipset board, but that just as a side note. ☺
If virtualization is not a big thing, then go ahead and grab a 4670K.
Look towards a Xeon 1230 V2 or V3 (V3 is more expensive but there are more motherboards available for 1150 socket). They both have VT-D and are essentially i7-3770/4770 without the GPU. This means you get the 8 threads for virtualization and the strong intel cores for WoW.
I got the K series as I will only be using it at home, to run up two VM's redhat and server 2k8 r2 - I had done this on my previous dekstop (3770k) without issue.
Yes my job is working around VM's and visualization professionally, however we have our own servers for that at work - I just dabble with it at home. I spend far more time playing WoW then I do playing with VM's when I'm not at work lol.
The parts are sitting next to me in a box, on my desk at work, waiting for home time lol.
if you got almost almost $1400 and your only game is WoW, then I would consider something like this:
http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/f3WtK8
Reasons:
Not overclocking, this CPU beats the 8350 in single core and multicore processing
The GTX 760 is better than the R9-270x and still in budget. Using the GTX 760 will also give you more performance with CUDA based programs that your virtualization programs might use.
Asrock B85 pro4 is a great motherboard for non-overclocking, and is a very good value and good features
This Viewsonic monitor.. is just a little cheaper... but has good reviews and I was just trying to save money.
Anyway, this will max out WoW settings are give you the best CPU performance for work.
Cooling is covered by a 120mm intake at the bottom of the case and the CPU fan is pulling the warm air up as it rises to the power supply which acts as an exhaust. It's very efficient and nearly silent.
Looks really good man. I like your interesting airflow design too. If you do plan on getting another 120mm fan, then populate the the other front fan position to pull more cool air in through the dust filters.
Well my new build has undergone some changes in the last 48 hours. There's a little bit of I told you so in here, I was sick of having a K series and not being able to OC on my B85 motherboard so that went for a Asrock Z87M Extreme 4 (I went Z87 on purpose, it had the fan headers I need and I have no need for SATA Express or M2 at the moment or in the near future). To keep things cool and quiet in my Core 1000 mATX case I also went for the Zalman LQ315 AIO cooler, setup in push pull as the case intake sucking cold air in through the radiator.
Results:
All fans sent to silent (case and water cooling unit) I am able to get my 4670k to 4.2Ghz @ 1.2v, I have not tried a higher multiplier as there's really no need to go higher at the moment, Prime95 stable at a max of 66 degree's Celsius.
As for the GPU I got my Sapphire R9 270X 4GB to 1100Mhz Core and 1500Mhz with +20PWR, standard voltage.
All in all this has made for a much faster and quieter machine.
Oh and as you can see I relocated my SSD from the side vertical mount (it was next to the GPU) to underneath a tray in the 5 1/4" bays.
