Ideal CPU/GPU in 2021

I apologize if this has been addressed recently but I’ve struck out looking thru the forums. My question is this; what is the ideal CPU and GPU build for maxing out WoW graphics and gameplay (assuming I’ve maxed out the other components) in the following scenario.

My plan is to play on a 49” ultra super wide at 2k 144hz in a 2 box (account) set up.

Question 1: are the capabilities of WoW such to now use 8-16 cpu cores, how much does single core vs multi-core speed matter, how do instructions per cycle weigh in to this, and total threads?

Question 2: in this scenario would a 6900 XT or RTX 3090 provide much benefit vs the 6800 or 3080 given I would in effect be playing the game twice on the same rig at what I hope will be max settings at 2k 144hz?

Thank you in advance for everyone’s time and consideration of this post.

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Personally, I really want an i7-9700k. I already have an RTX 2060.

watch out, the GD hall monitors are already reporting you for cheating!

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World of Warcraft: Shadowlands System Requirements

Updated: 4 months ago

Article ID: 256565

Relevant Products:

Below are the minimum and recommended system specifications of the Shadowlands® expansion for World of Warcraft® on Windows® and Mac®. Due to potential programming changes, the minimum system requirements for World of Warcraft may change over time.

Windows

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS RECOMMENDED SPECIFICATIONS
OPERATING SYSTEM Windows® 7 64-bit Windows® 10 64-bit
PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ i5-3450
AMD FX™ 8300 Intel® Core™ i7-6700K
AMD Ryzen™ 7 2700X
VIDEO NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 760 2 GB or AMD Radeon™ RX 560 2 GB or Intel® UHD Graphics 630 (45W TDP) *Requires manufacturer’s driver support. NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 8 GB or AMD Radeon™ RX Vega 64 8 GB or better
MEMORY 4GB RAM (8GB if using supported integrated graphics) 8GB RAM
STORAGE Solid State Drive (SSD)

100GB available space
Or
Hard Disk Drive (HDD)
100GB available space (depending on the performance of the drive, player experience may be impacted on HDD)|Solid State Drive (SSD)
100GB available space|
|INTERNET|Broadband internet connection|
|INPUT|Keyboard and mouse required. Other input devices are not supported.|Multi-button mouse with scroll wheel|
|RESOLUTION|1024 x 768 minimum display resolution|

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands System Requirements - Blizzard Support (battle.net)

Multi vs. single core isn’t about speed so much as how many tasks or applications you can run at once, especially with streaming on Twitch

Ryzen 9 5950x $799 :16 core / 32 thread 3.4 / 4.9 GHz, or their previous 2nd gen 64 core Threadripper
Intel i9 11900K Rocket Lake: 8 core/16 thread 4.8 / 5.3 GHz is coming out in Q1 2021

The Ryzen Zen 3 Threadripper was teased at CES 2021 and was also suggested to be a Q1 2021, so it’s just a matter of when you’d like to upgrade

6800+ series or 3080+ series are both fine for a giant monitor, if you’d like the 6900 XT or the RTX 3090 it’s merely a matter of spoiling yourself, and seeing Cyberpunk on ultra

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For sure a SSD is a must. I have a HDD and when SL came out my PC couldn’t cut it. I went and bought an external SSD (1tb) and my problem was solved. Moved WOW, Classic and Diablo 3 to the new drive.

You can run the game decent well below those minimum specs.

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Haven’t read the rest of the replies yet, I assume this has been posted 100 times already, but the best CPU and GPU you can get in 2021 is “anything you can actually buy, at all”

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HDD should be fine. I use a SSD for Windows and HDD for wow install and have no issue m the PC is like 5 years ago and I had spare SSD and HDD so I just built my own

I just built a new one this year my CPU is

Intel Core i5 10600K @ 4.10GHz Comet Lake 14nm Technology.

So is 2 box cheating if u r paying for 2 accounts and playing both at the same time? Can someone show me where that this really is a banned play style?

Depends what you’re doing, really.

WoW still doesn’t make full use of modern multi-core CPUs, this is largely why it performs so poorly on great systems. That said, you could easily get 100ish fps on a 2000 series nvidia card, I imagine even more on the 3000 series if you could actually get one.

Single core speed is more important, since WoW sucks at handling multi-cores still. That said, you should go with a better overall CPU and not just build around WoW.

If you can get a 3090, I would get a 3090. You’ll probably get a noticeable performance boost, but remember that WoW is a CPU-intensive, for reasons mentioned above.

Multiboxing isn’t banned but software key replication is.

A HDD will work but I wouldn’t bother buying one if you care about performance.