Need computer system advice

have a friend with the Killer network card.  he loves it.  said he can send a signal to the isp showing he is getting half the packets he really is so they send him double the bandwidth.  he says its amazing

I'm no computer expert, but I put together my custom back in March and it serves its purpose just fine. 6 Cores? News to me, I was still dumbfounded by quad cores :P I have heard quad core can be overkill for WoW, but a lil extra is always nice. I personally use an AMD Phenom II X2 (Dual Core, 3.2GHz, not OC'd) and don't really have any problems with it. I also have 4 GB of RAM, I'd like to have more, but I think I maxed my MoBo (Biostar TA790GXE) out. I also use the Tuniq T120 Extreme heat sink...highly recommended if you plan to play for extended periods of time, leave your computer on for a long time or you plan to OC. Without OCing I saw just about a 10C drop in temp for my CPU and around the same drop in MoBo temp.

Video Cards...I've always heard dual carding just isn't worth it, especially for WoW. Personally I WANNA run two cards, but my MoBo only has 1 PCI-E slot, so that will have to wait till I upgrade my MoBo. Right now I'm using an XFX Radeon HD 4850 (1GB, DDR3, 256-bit, $110) and it works just fine, I encounter very little lag in 25 mans and I run with most of my settings maxed. Personally I feel Nividia and Radeon are two sides of the same coin, when comparing cards against each other, I found very little differences between the two. I feel your just buying a name, but some people will disagree with me =D. One thing I can tell you from experience, is STAY AWAY from the 5700 series Radeon cards (In specifically the Radeon HD 5770, 1gb, DDR5, 128-bit?, $160). This was the card I originally built my comp with and it died within just a couple of months. On top of that its a VERY unreliable card, it would freeze up randomly, even more so around raid time. Unfortunately it's not just MY card, most of the 5700 series cards have had this issue. On the plus side, I got mine from XFX, whom have AMAZING customer service. As soon as I'm not lazy I have to send that card in to get RMA'd and pray the new one I get will work.

Again, I'm no expert. The people you really wanna tech talk with are Fiermi and Relm, I know they both know their stuff when it comes to computers and such.

Can't imagine that would be particularly helpful for WoW. It's not exactly a graphically intensive game. Unless the big secret they're holding on to is that in Cataclysm the game turns into Crysis.

If WoW is the only game you're playing, you hardly need top-of-the-line.

I run WoW at max settings at 1680x1050 on a Core 2 Duo E8500, 4GB RAM, and an EVGA 9800 GT 512. I'm on a plain SATA 7200RPM 3GBp/s. I've run two video cards in a prior machine and I thought it was crap. Unless the technology has come a long way since then, I wouldn't bother.

I don't have problems with most modern games -- I play TF2, Borderlands, Dragon Age, SC2 beta and BFBC2 at max or near max settings.

If you're planning on having more than 4GB of RAM, make sure you use a 64-bit OS.

(edit: I also HATE ATI with a passion and would never recommend an ATI card over nVIDIA.)

im thinkin of upgradein too, anyone like alienware? are they all that for gameing? or just a kewl name .. im playin on my laptop now .. after about 30 minutes, expecially in an instance, it runs so hot i can barely touch the keys :/

im thinkin of upgradein too, anyone like alienware? are they all that for gameing? or just a kewl name .. im playin on my laptop now .. after about 30 minutes, expecially in an instance, it runs so hot i can barely touch the keys :/

I have a Dell E520 that I built specifically to play WoW three years ago. I have updated ONLY the video card and added RAM, it still cranks. Bold text is items that effect gaming. The machine was $799 and I have spent an additional $200 in upgrades (not counting ruined keyboards.)

It has a Pentium4 processor with the fastest bus speed available.

RAM - maxed out at 5GB.

I have an Invidia GForce video card with 512 RAM onboard.

80GB Hard Drive

The only wireless or remote peripheral I have is the remote network widget since the box is downstairs. My bro has all wireless stuff and I swear, it does cause problems. Also, it is no big thing to replace a $12 keyboard if you spill. The $70 remote one... very nice, but no. I use Logitech, the network widget is Belkin.

RAM is really easy to install. I went to CNET.com and they rated Crucial as one of the best for memory. 2GB for under $50 with shipping. Unless Dell has a deal, save the money and add RAM yourself. If you go to About.com and look up install RAM in a PC, nice, simple instructions.

Hope this helps.

I'm not a fan of buying pre-built gaming pc...or any pc for that matter. Their not hard to put together, you save a good deal of money and you actually KNOW what your getting. I'm determined I can teach my blonde sister how to build a computer.

I also forgot to mention I have a 1Tb HD, thats all I know other than it's hooked up to a SATA connector. I never knew a HD could cause playability issues.

But then that business went bust,  5 other guys opened shop in my little corner of the world, and kablewy.

But I can tell you this....  If you don't have patients (you know, don't get upset easily) then building your own can be rewarding....HOWEVER!!!----!!!!!!----!!!!  If you don't want to deal with all the crap that goes with separate warranty claims to every single company for every part you buys, then buy premade and get the 4 year warranty.   Spurge on the warranties...no seriously...get the warranty....you might think its a waste of time, it isn't.   Your comptuer WILL have problems...they all do...Dell/HP/Asus/Etc.   They all have problems.   The one you build yourself, WILL HAVE PROBLEMS.   Buy the fricken EXTENDED Warranty....ONLY if it is more than 3 years....if its less, your wasting your money...GET THE 4+ Year one....    I do this crap for a living...trust me.....you want the big warranty....i'm not lieing, I'm being serious...The HP Laptop I had at my work (bran new when I got here) has gone through 8 hard drives, 2 screens, 1 keyboard.  All fixed under warranty....of course I'm hp certified so I did the work, but still....:)

Lots of very helpful stuff here.  I'm looking forward to seeing what my framerate is in ICC 25 this week after switching from wireless to hardwired connection. 

I like the idea of building my own, but won't be going that route.   I enjoy taking off the case, blowing out the dust, and I've even been able to do very little things like changing the soundcard, changing the little watch battery, and adding RAM, but I know that's really the extent of my patience and abilities.  Touching all that stuff in there can't be good for you anyways. 

If you've changed sound cards, ram, etc. you can build a computer, its not much harder from there. But, at the same time buying one is nice to, mainly because of the reason Jox made, with warranties. But whatever floats your boat =P

are worth every penny. Much as I would like to build a machine some day, buying a customized pre-made and the max warranty is the way to go.

Let us know what you finally get.

The waist is spending time building a machine. 7 years ago it was reasonable to do so, but these days so many sites do fully custom builds and do so much cheaper than you will come close to doing.

I suggest you look at sites like cyperbowerpc.com or ibuypower.com

As far as the other points as I understand it, you shouldn't bother with dual cards, just focus on 1 stronger card. If you plan on the PC being the only thing you do for the next 7 years then maybe dual card it, otherwise the cards are just way outperformed within a couple of years.

Get AMD... they're far superior in price and performance at the moment, nvidia may cater to WoW, but whatever performance is gained from that is well outbalanced by other areas of AMD's performance.

I think you can push the memory up to 16GB to fully take advantage of the 64-bit system. It's certainly overkill, but we'll be to that level before we know it.

Get 3 SSD drives with a RAID0 controller.

You can get some motherboards with beaucoups (thank you ikuri for the french lesson) of expansion slots. Go for it!

Never had any problems with my Dell, just Windows. Going to do some virtual shopping since if I do get SSD, I have to liquidate any IRAs and such. Definately getting a new computer, a new bed (IKEA ROCKS!,) pay my credit cards WAY down and then give the rest to my parents to pay back the money they have spent supporting me.

Uh, somewhere in there I need to get a new iPod and get the slot drive fixed on my Mac so I can get stuff off it and then clear that puppy's hard drive. I have a person drooling over it, for parts probably.

***crosses fingers and toes***

Jox & Tumor - From what I have read, it apparently counts AGAINST you now if you pay off or cancel credit cards. The new "wisdom" is to leave a very-low balance and use credit cards for things you have to buy like gas and groceries. Pay that amount off every month. That's what we're doing.

I have 2 very low-limit cards (did the bankruptcy thing long ago,) and my American Express (the one I will always keep, awesome services.) I would have to have the cash as I would use the Amex since it doubles the warranty on things like computers and that you have to pay off each month. Both my "little" cards are rewards cards with no annual fee.

I'm bumping this as I finally purchased a new computer last week.  Last year, I discovered that when I went from wireless to wired, all my lag problems went away even though by any standard measuring parameter, I had a great wireless connection.  Still, I play on rather low settings and the old computer has been giving me issues with startup, etc. 

A lot of posts above were tremendously helpful.

After vast research, I went with Puget Systems.  I really like these guys.  Granted, I haven't gotten my computer yet so my tune may change but their reviews are amazing and so far the customer service has been great.  Props to Mel for recommending them.  I came very close to ibuypower, but they have very many really damning reviews of sending machines DOA because they don't test them.  I've always been loyal to Dell/Alienware, but they just seemed overpriced and I'm tired of the outsourced customer service. 

I did semi-seriously consider building my own rig.  I think it would've been fun and appreciate the above encouragement.  I can install RAM and soundcards and do a bone marrow biopsy in under 4 minutes, but I fear that installing motherboards and heatsinks are beyond my level of patience and ability.   Maybe when my kid is older we can make that a father-son project. 

Since I talked myself out of some of the top-of-the-line gaming bells and whistles (dual video cards, six core processor, RAID aligned hard drives...), I went with a loaded Serenity Professional over the Deluge.  I took Cacc's (and others') advice and went with one good card over 2 video cards, although I did choose NVidia (GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB) instead of AMD.  They warned me the system won't be completely silent with that video card, but I'm expecting it to be far quieter than what I have now, which is a huge plus for me with respect to wife aggro. 

Oh, I meant to mention.  I asked about the killer card.  The salesman I talked with said he was one of the guys at Puget who ran their tests on the killer card and didn't detect any differences, so they don't recommend it.  He said he has a free one he got to test and it sits in his junk drawer.  I've heard pro and con but it was hard to order one after talking with him. 

I'll admit I haven't looked to see if they're changing something in the 4.2 patch notes, but as of 4.1 WOW still does not play nice with multiple video cards - even if you have each card hooked to its own monitor.  For WoW specifically, you'll actually do worse with 2 cards than you will with only 1 installed. For WoW you're always best off with getting a single GPU card with as much horsepower as possible. 

WoW does handle multiple cores/thread pretty well though - at least up to 4.  WoW will utilize 3 cores well with everything else off loaded to the 4th core.  There's currently little benifit of going past 4 cores or threads though.  Note that there were some issues with some of the initial Intel quad cores with multi-threading where they actually performed worse than dual-core chips because WoW was trying to use the first 3 threads and the first 2 threads are on the same core.  This created an artificial choke point where 1 core was overloaded and 2 of the cores weren't used at all.  WoW has gotten better and will now try to balance its workload across cores, not just threads.  Still if you see that your system is overusing 1 core (typically core0/thread0), there's some patches/registry tricks you can do to force the game to manually manage its core/thread utilization.  A good dual-core is all you really need for WoW, but you will see an improvement stepping up to quad-core so long as your system isn't bottlenecked somewhere else.

WoW by itself isn't too hard on a hard drive (except for loading new zones/instances), but addons, like recount, can really keep your hard drive spinning by constantly trying to write data to the disk.  A SSD can help a bit with that.  It's not hugely noticable, but it does smooth some stuff out.  I get noticably less lag with my SSD than I did before.  It doesn't really improve my average FPS much, but it does keep my lowest FPS from going lower than it should.

RAM - WoW's not very intensive, only about 2GB inside major cities.  But you want to keep 1-2GB for your OS (Win7), and you want to have more on hand for all the other stuff that thinks it needs to run in the background.  You can still get by with only 4GB, but I'd say that's the miniumum for WoW anymore.  If you can go to 6 or 8 GB all the better.  Perhaps more important than the amount of RAM is the speed of the RAM.  Both the clockrate and the CAS latency come into play - the faster the better. 

I realized I responded to a grave-dug post later when I was at work, didn't realize it since I was on my ipod. Glad I wasn't alone lol.