Build Suggestions

Well my friends lil brother wants me to build him a new machine thats main purpose is to play WoW at low res(1200x1084 or somewhere in that area) for no more than 500 bucks shipped. Not including optical drive and OS ( Re-use optical from old machine and will install win7 rc)


I open to AMD or Intel. Nvida or Ati. And overclocking. Any ideas on whats the best way to spend the money for such a machine.


Case?

HDD- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822136098

PSU ?

4gig or DDR2 ram. (no need to pay extra for ddr3 ram/boards)

AMD board/cpu combo? (noob with AMD overclocking so hopefull a BE cpu. Where as Intel I can overclock them in my sleep...)

Gpu? Im thinking the budget for the gpu should be 100.

Intel cpu/board.?



I had a decent system tossed together for 600 but this 500 limit is messing with me. Please give any input that you can WoW players. Again this systems goal is to play wow "good".

amds are just as easy if not easier to oc than intels, its all in the base clock.

The Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition and an ATi Radeon HD 4670 will be more than enough horsepower for what he wants to do and those two together cost about $200. The Phenom II X2 550BE is an unlocked CPU so it's very easy to overclock.

x3 710
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103648

hdd
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822136098

board and ram
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813130228
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820148262
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820231207
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813186147

case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811129065

gpu
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814161273

the ddr2 build will be $50 cheaper

i decided not to put any oc specific parts because the owner of the pc dose not sound like an enthusiast.

The case is a personal preference item, but just don't use a Xion PSU.

The Antec Basiq's aren't that great, despite the name. A better choice would be an Antec Sonata III which comes with an Earthwatts 500W PSU, for $110 and free shipping: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811129024

To be honest, everything that you're looking at seems to be overkill for WoW. I have a Kuma 7750BE (two core Phenom 1 at 2.7ghz) with a 4870 512mb, a cheap 780g/sb700 mobo and 4gb of ram, and I can max out WoW at 1920x1080 stock processor speeds. Also WoW is only dual threaded (and poorly at that--95% usage on one core 65% on the other) so more cores won't help.

I'd reccomend something like what I've got with a lesser video card for the game--either a 4850 or 4770 should be more than enough to max out graphics in WoW. given your goal resolution, you can probably go even lower than that.

If I were to choose AMD for the processor I'd say that something like my Kuma 7750, or maybe even an old Athlon 6000+ is probably more than enough, although the additional computations per clock, and higher clock speeds of a Phenom II are something that excites me, personally. With a basic 780g board you should be set.

If I were to go Intel, I'd probably gofor the e5200 due to it's overclocking ability, although lga775 is a dead socket. I don't know enough to reccomend a mobo though.

A 720BE or 550BE paired with a 4670 would not be overkill, particularly since only a commercial interest conceivably builds a PC for just one purpose.

metoo

Use the CM 690 case. Its cheap and has great airflow. Its also only 69.99

Thanks, that's Onus Bones, my primary; I wish I'd used that name here too (I do my Newegg reviews as "Onus" ). I've been meaning to put up a new one of him...