It’s time for a new desktop. I haven’t purchased one since 2013. I only play WoW, literally 99% of the time, occasionally Overwatch and sometimes Rust (and then old games like Command & Conquer series, SimCity). I would like one that will run WoW like a God. I prefer a prebuilt kind of combo but I’m open to just putting the pieces together (it’s been awhile that’s why I’m not too excited about doing that)…I’m quite willing to spend up to $2,000, maybe a bit more if it’s worth the extra couple hundred. Any tips? WoW isn’t that intensive of a game to run to my understanding, so maybe this is easily attainable with spending less than $2000?
You’ll always have slowdowns. It’ll never be 100% smooth in places like TM or Ashran.
If you want to top of the like the 9900KF with a 2080 TI and 4000Mhz+ RAM with a TCP accelerator, you’ll have to build it yourself.
Of course. Whats the max a prebuilt one can do compared to an assembled one?
you can find prebuilts with max parts. you can always go through builder sites directly and they are more customizeable there typically.
wow isn’t that intensive in some ways, but it can max out modern parts depending on what you are looking for. presuming you want to play on ultra and get high fps in 4k resolution, then it’ll use whatever you throw at it.
it can always use is the very best cpu. 9700k, a 9900k, or a ryzen 3. in a prebuilt you’ll probably have more luck finding those intels, and they are slightly better performers in games but it’s close enough i’d decide mostly based on price. if you don’t do any productivity work, the ryzen 3’s will all perform similarly so going with the more expensive ones is probably not necessary.
GPU is where wow tends not to push so hard. even at 4k a 2070 or 2070 super will probably be plenty for wow. better than that just gets you more longevity and headroom.
going to ibuypower’s website i can put together a 9900k or kf, 16gb ram @ 3200, 1tb ssd, and a 2070 super for ~1850 before tax. i can make about the same comp with a ryzen 3600x for 1675. what exactly to get is a bit of a personal call, you’ll have to decide exactly what parts work for you but that’s the ballpark i’d be thinking about for your budget.
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That’s not true. It all depends on what you want to do. Large scale PVP is very intensive on all components.
i mean i don’t have any way to benchmark just large scale pvp, but in large raids a 2080 is not pushed to 100% at 4k. it wouldn’t in battlegrounds either. i guess in some 40v40 or larger world fighting maybe it could be but that’s such a niche encounter i don’t know that it’s relevant to anything.
thank you so much for your input… after quickly scanning the site (i’m at work) I saw this
~https://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Gaming-RDY-BQIBG201 and i was wondering what you thought of it.
You don’t need that kind of budget for a WoW only rig. That’s just a waste. For a prebuilt at the website you linked this would run WoW very, very well. ~https://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Gaming-RDY-CYWIBG201
This can handle wow on ultra, in mythic raids?
and sadly they’re out of this model right now
Nothing can handle WoW 100% on Ultra (a full “10” with high anti-aliasing). Its the whole “point of diminishing returns” thing. $2,000 vs. $1,000 won’t buy you hardly any more FPS at 1080p or 1440p. Again, something like an i5-9400F and a GTX 1660 Ti will perform very nicely in WoW. An RTX 2080 and an i9-9900k with also perform very nice, but not that much better for the extra you spent.
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I have an uber cpu and motherboard, and loads of memory. My system also features two 2080s in SLI (using DirectX11). I get good fps at 4k most of the time–and have set max to 60–matching my monitor with temperatures maxing out in the mid fifties at an ambient room temperature of 30. However, the FPS drops to about 30 or so at Ashran. Surprising, really–you’d think two 2080s could do more than that. So what now? I have another rig with a good setup, and two 1070s in SLI. At 4k there is a minor bit of tearing and stutter at times, and the FPS is similar but not as good. I’m thinking two 2080 supers or two 2080 tis and a move of the 2080s to replace the 1070s. But then why not wait for 3080 tis next year? But I digress…
your fps dropping in ashran is most likely because your CPU is being maxed out, not because your GPU is. you’d have to keep tabs on % usage while it’s happening to be sure. if you use dx11 you might consider testing dx12 out in situations where your fps is dropping as it may do better.
a 1070 might struggle to hit 60fps at 4k on occasion but i’d think it would do pretty decent. two in sli shouldn’t have issues i wouldn’t think.
Blizzard doesn’t support multi-GPU in DX12 mode.
Exactly… what you want is as many real cores as you can get, something like an i7 9700k or i7 9900k
I’m going to expand on your correct statement a bit.
DX11 you want the fastest single core you can get. DX12 you’ll want to get the fastest single core on a multicore CPU.
How your system performs will depend on your hardware, software and what content you do.
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Agreed, I run an i7 9700k @ 4.57GHz on DX12 with just an RTX 2060 XC on a 50" 1080p TV with Vsync on … the game never drops below 60 fps no matter where I am, open world or raiding it’s a solid 60 fps … world boss with 100+ people … 60 fps all day long!
I’m so happy that Blizzard went with DX12 on the update 
You also have a GPU with nice DX12 support so that helps =). DX12 keeps better frames vs DX11 particularly in large scale PVP.
Most people with older Nvidia cards should probably stick to DX11 though. Radeon and Nvidia Turning cards should fare better with DX12.
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correct. what i was suggesting is that for his computer with 2080’s in sli that he try dx12, presuming he is using dx11, as he might get better fps during cpu intense areas, and is getting little benefit from the second 2080.
for his other rig, a single 1070 might be slightly insufficient at times in 4k, but two in sli probably won’t be.
I see what you’re saying and it makes sense. DX12 doesn’t work with SLI so he’ll have to drop SLI 1st.