WoW Ultra: 60 FPS minimum

You can't count on your PC to fully control framerates. MMO performance is not only on the system but also on your internet connection/lag and the servers. What you want to build will run WoW at 60 fps (although I'm betting you won't be able to tell the difference between that and 40), but you can't guarantee that you will run smooth all the time.

^ The difference in WoW is actually quite noticeable  

You don't need a particularly powerful GPU to max WoW with high FPS. 580 would be overkill for WoW alone. I used to maxx it with 60FPS at the res with my old Radeon HD 4870 - hardly the most powerful card!

WoW is quite heavily CPU based still (not coded particularly well + an old engine) so you're right to go for the 2500k in my humble opinion. I'd also suggest at least 4GB RAM... RAM is fairly cheap at the moment, so forking out on 8GB wouldn't hurt you. If WoW is all you're playing, even a 560Ti is redundant...moreover you'd want something such as Geforce 460 perhaps, or maybe HD6870  

Either way, good luck with your build  

Alright, I appreciate the advice. Bumping down a little bit on my video card will save me some money.

In response to hang-the-9, I thought that internet connection had zero affect on your FPS. It may affect whether the game lags but your graphics are still being generated at the same FPS, are they not? I think screen tearing is completely dependant on your hardware. Am I wrong?

^Just be careful not to build your whole rig around one game...

Allegiances change, etc etc. and you don't wanna get gimped if you suddenly realise you don't want to carry on playing WoW  

How fast you card can throw pixels at the screen is not tied to the internet connection true, maybe I misunderstood what you were trying to accomplish. If you just want 60fps with a theoretical 100% solid connection, your hardware can do that easily. I was pointing out that even with the best hardware you won't get a "guaranteed" 60fps due to server-side and connection lag.

Okay, I appreciate the tip. I know my connection is a potential point of failure, but I'm okay with that. I don't want my hardware to ever be the cause of my FPS dropping below 60. That might be a better way to phrase my statement.

No issues with your system of that. I have a 9800 GT with a 3 gig dual-core that runs WoW 50-60 fps in at least 5-mans, your system will be just fine. 1600x1200 with 4x AA.

Sig below on my system. In 25man raids I've only suffered noticeable fps loss on chogall and that dipped down in the 20s still playable but oh well. Otherwise I stay at 60 (vsync) at 1920x1080. I do think there is bandwidth issues at play since a lot of things are happening on my screen which I feel the 560ti should be able to handle and my cpu shouldn't have issues either. I do play windowed vs full screen so that could aid in my fps on that fight.

Should also state, my wife uses an i7 860 and a gts250. Her performance is still 60fps as well so I'd say get a nice 4 core processor and a moderate gpu is all you need.

As for the SSD, I had WoW on mine but it doesn't affect gaming at all. You load up WoW faster but beyond that you won't see a change.

Completely agree with this one, try to build your system around the type of games that you like to play and not just one game. Otherwise your system looks like it would be fine maintaining max frames within the limits of the WoW engine. Make sure you have plenty of RAM, I'd recommend at least 8GB. Also watch out for add-ons, many popular WoW add-ons are FPS suckers just because they are poorly coded and there is no quality control.

+1.

Carbonite, NuI, Gatherer, etc... All massive system hogs. Don't necessarily be put off (all incredibly useful, especially Carbonite (<3 <3 <3) but be aware of each addon's requirements and the effect it'll have upon your system and your game  

Good luck! Have fun,
-Nih

no need for such a fast ssd. 2 samsung spinpoint f3's will give you 240mbps in raid 0 which is plenty fast enough for the most demanding cards and games. add to that it costs way less and you get 2 TB of storage. i have 1 set up on mine and i have it partitioned to 500 and 1.5tb'ish and its pretty darn fast...

I would like to debate what all of you are saying. because I have 2 GTX 580 hydro copper ftw 2 and the i7 extreme edition 990x hex core, with a SSD and 24GB of ram, the processor of course being watercooled just like the cards are. I get 60 fps sometimes, and 40 sometimes. Which I call BS on wow because of how much i spent to build my gaming pc. did i mention i have the processor overclocked to 4.0 and the cards overclocked as well. not to mention I found modded drivers for a quadro nvidia card, there 3700 dollar one, that were modded to run on the 580's, and it does give me a boost, just still not enough to get 60 solid. I could turn Vsync off sure, but then it everything looks meh when its coming towards you. with vsync off i get 90-300 depending on where i am, but as of right now im saying its impossible to get a solid 60 with vsync on at all times on the highest settings. just not possible.

Quadro drivers will actually degrade performance in most games. Quadro is designed for full OpenGL implementation while most games are written for DirectX. Quadro cards are expensive because they are certified to use special certified drivers for professional rendering programs, on the hardware side they are 99% the same card. Just because you throw money at a PC doesn't mean you properly optimized the system, I run a far humbler system than yours and have no problem pulling a solid 60fps at 1080.

Personally I like Radeon cards, if you want that steady FPS don't buy nVidia. All tests show nVidia FPS in 3D games to crash down way below Radeon.

Little birdy humms around the d3d drivers ? Yes, the comprehensive game comparisons on cards was very useful, thanks. I also burned an old X1300 on WoW in about 1yr. as warranty expired... WoW is 24bit colors FFS !  

I'm pretty sure WoW doesn't support SLI. I know for a fact it doesn't support Crossfire, and I'm almost certain SLI falls into the same boat.

-Nih

Lag has nothing to do with FPS, also WoW servers do not send the environmental graphics or chars to your PC, it's already on your hard drive. Send/Receive amount on wow is kept extremely low. No increase in performance = we let you use it but we don't support it.