My computer is about a decade old. It struggles to run WoW and a single Chrome tab at the same time. I am looking at the hardware requirements for Dragonflight and it appears I will not be able to play unless I make some upgrades. I am planning on just building a new machine. The minimum requirement listed for a CPU is one that has 4 cores and a clock frequency of 3.0 GHz. Similarly, the recommended requirement is one that has 6 cores and a clock frequency of 3.5 GHz.
I am leaning towards getting a CPU with 6 cores since I usually multitask while I play. However, I am finding that older generation CPUs recommended by Blizzard that meet the minimum and recommended requirements are much more expensive than some of the newer generation CPUs that don’t seem to meet these requirements.
In particular, the Intel Core i5 12400F is within my price range and is cheaper than some older generation CPUs recommended by Blizzard and cheaper than the Ryzen 5 5600X. However, it is quoted as having a base core clock of 2.5 GHz with an automatic boosted clock of up to 4.4 GHz under certain conditions.
If I don’t do any overclocking, is this CPU likely going to be a problem? I’m not sure how the automatic clock boosting works. If Dragonflight demands at least 3.0 GHz, will all of the CPUs used by the game boost up to 3.0 GHz?
