[Solved] Self built computer running slow

I made this computer to play WoW. i was told it would be just fine for it, but it just doesnt run good at all.

Motherboard - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813159002

VideoCard - NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT

Processor - Intel Pentium Dual CPU E2200 @2.20GHz

2048MB RAM(kingston if that matters)


but yeah if anyone happens to know why its running terribly id appreciate the help

oh and i know someone who got the same exact computer and his runs great

That would have run WoW well about 4 years ago on a 1024x768 monitor. If that computer is new, the person who said it would run WoW fine doesn't know that they are talking about (or their definition of fine is different from mine).


What monitor resolution are you at? That determine how much graphics power you need.

Today for gaming you would want a 3GHz CPU and a much stronger graphics card to handle bigger monitor resolutions.

If Nvidia calls it a GT they dont expect you to game on it. If its a GTS then its a bargain gaming card. The GTXs are the strong gaming graphics cards.


Try setting the WoW graphics options for DX9 at very low and see how it plays at your monitors native resolution.

Try reducing the game resolution to much lower, but turn the graphic settings back up to medium and see how it plays.

That will tell you if your CPU or GPU should be improved first. My bet is replacing the graphics card will give you a pretty good performance boost since a GT 9500 isnt really a gaming card.

Its just slow overall like even just on myspace and such.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applica [...] -80JB%20IM thats the hard drive i have.

Holy crap, an IDE drive. Those things are dinosaurs. Plus it's not even dense. You have pretty fast (3 years old) hardware. For $50, you can get a 500 GB Samsung F3. It will be 4 times faster than your current one.

How much free space do you have left on that hard drive of yours? Those things typically get really slow as soon as you use up about 50% of the drive.

If it's a bad RAM, your PC probably wouldn't boot at all. Check the task manager, and see the performance tab. If it's a fully loaded RAM the Memory/PF bar will go all the way to the top. Same goes for the CPU load. Full load on both the CPU usage and Memory will slow down the overall performance of a PC.

Although I don't think it's both. I agree with masterasia, probably the IDE drive. Try using a SATA drive, if possible. Compare the real time speed between the 2 type of drives. If it's significant, you'll be able to notice.

Good luck!

Best answer selected by zach1301.