Hello, I am not very knowledgeable about the latest computers and wholly incapable of building my own but am in need of an upgrade. My 8 year old Lenovo all-in-one no longer runs WoW in playable fashion, and is increasingly having difficulty with non-MMO older games and even lags badly with internet browsing.
It isn’t a good time financially for me to upgrade, and if I do so I need to purchase through Amazon in order to take advantage of some gift cards I have there. I don’t want to have to upgrade again anytime soon, but need to keep the price as low as possible. I believe this computer meets most or all of the recommended Shadowlands requirements, but I’m less confident looking at the Dragonflight specs. The different graphics cards, etc. just don’t mean anything to me to know if I would be OK or find the game unplayable again with Dragonflight or likely the next expansion.
This is the computer I’m looking at, any advice or do you see a better option on Amazon that is less expensive or similarly priced?
HP Pavilion Gaming Desktop, AMD Radeon RX 5500, AMD Ryzen 3 5300G (Beat i7-10750H), 12GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Win 11 H, 9 USB Ports, Keyboard and Mouse Combo, Pre-Built PC Tower, JAWFOAL
$749.99
Thanks for any suggestions you can offer, here are the specs from the Amazon listing for the above computer -
|Processor|4.2 GHz ryzen_3|
|RAM|8 GB DDR4|
|Hard Drive|512 GB SSD|
|Graphics Coprocessor|AMD Radeon RX 5500|
|Chipset Brand|NVIDIA|
|Card Description|Dedicated|
|Graphics Card Ram Size|4 GB|
|Wireless Type|Bluetooth|
|Number of USB 2.0 Ports|4|
|Number of USB 3.0 Ports|5|
Hey there, as this isn’t a technical problem with the game (like crashing or connection issues), you’ll want to edit your post and relocate it to General Discussion. You’re likely to get more traction on the discussion there, too.
That system looks like it will be OK to run wow for the now, but it looks like it will be out-scaled in the future (possibly as soon as the expansion after dragonflight)
It’s also an HP, so post-purchase upgrades aren’t really a thing.
Branded rigs usually has issues with upgrade due to OEMness (proprietary connectors). You probably need to get a new rig.
Also, Ryzen hates single channel RAM. 8 + 4GB RAM for your current setup?
This will get the job done without breaking the bank.
Core i5-12400
MSI B660M-A Pro
8GB DDR4-3200 X2 (must be in pair)
GTX 1660 or RTX 2060 or RTX 3060 12GB
Move SSD and HDD over from previous rig
Cougar GX-S 650W or Silverstone Viva Gold or NZXT C650 or Corsair RM650 power supply
Lian Li Lancool 215 case.
Thanks, that is what I was afraid of. I really need to stay under $600 (and have almost $300 in Amazon credit which will get me there, so really $900). Since I’ve had an all-in-one for 8 years, I’ve got to buy a monitor with the computer as well.
I’m not one for upgrades or building my own system, I just need to get an out of the box system as inexpensively as I can that will do the job as long as possible before becoming obsolete.
This is what I currently have, which isn’t functional for Wow anymore (I get 1-2 fps) and really isn’t doing anything well. I think it overheats, it freezes up even browsing the internet but works normally again for a couple of minutes if I put it to sleep until after the fan has stopped running for a bit -
I had an older generation of that green Pavilion gaming desktop. It’s price was great for the budget. Ran BFA nicely. My only gripe is it felt like the computer/graphics card “burned out” fast. When I looked inside, the gtx 1650 was single fan, super bare bones looking (cheaply built gtx).
It lasted me a couple months and then started slowing down in performance. Maybe they worked out the kinks in the newer models now?
It’s below the minimum specs for SL, so that would explain the single digit FPS.
On your point about wanting it to last longer on a tight budget, you’re probably not going to get great value in a pre-built on that small of a budget (unless you find something on a deep discount or sale).
No wonder. You have integrated graphics. aka no graphics card.
And even for a chip, it’s a bad one. Intel is for CPU only. Avoid any mention of Intel graphics.
You could buy that PC in your original post and you’d be a happy individual. Your WoW performance will sky rocket.
But of course, shop around.
512 GB SSD is the lowest amount of storage I’d consider. Remember WoW takes up like 75GBs alone. And you do not want to be put in a position where you’re gaming off an external storage. It is barely functional, if at all.
I’ve had bad experiences with AMD personally, I prefer the Intel + nVidia combo, but AMD has come a long way and a lot of people prefer them these days.
Also I noticed in the title of the PC it says 12GBs or RAM, but then in the specs it’s actually 8GB.
I just bought an Omen one from them. Got it Tuesday and I love it. I got it on sale last week, it retails for over 5k CND. But top of the line, I won’t have to upgrade for a while.
The only downside is Windows 11. But for warrantees, HP is great. My son’s compy had issues, they picked it up and brought it back repaired in under a week.
My experience with an HP Omen was that the CPU cooler was failing (resulting in overheating to the point of random shutdowns), and they were so adamant that the issue was actually the CPU itself, and that part was on back order with an estimated wait of almost 3 months, that I ended up returning it and buying an MSI.
Note that this was on it’s 2nd trip to the repair shop for the same issue.
You should no issue with that option, although you won’t be playing on Ultra graphics, but you’ll be able to have better than the low graphics for sure.
I wondered about the 8 vs. 12 of RAM too. I see in the listing it says graphic card RAM of 4, so I thought maybe that is something additional that adds to the regular 8 of RAM and that is where they got the 12? Sorry that may be a really stupid idea, I just don’t know enough about this stuff to know.
I know I won’t be playing the game at its best, I’m OK with lowering graphics settings and I’m not a raider. I play solo and BFA was still enjoyable for me on my current computer, although I had problems in BGs. Even back in Legion I tried to avoid Dalaran as it could take several minutes to load and be able to move after teleporting there.