Im currently in the market for a new PC and as someone whos 90% computer illiterate (just recently learned the difference between a CPU and a GPU) i have no idea what to look for.
I want to be able to play WoW on great settings without dropping framerate during raids and whatnot, as well as some more graphic intensive games like Monster Hunter World, while keeping my budget at around $1000.
Im currently using a prebuilt ASUS that I bought about 8 years ago, and its finally starting to die. I can give you the specs I have available below
Processor- AMD FX-8130
Memory- DDR3 8GB
Graphics- AMD Radeon R7 240 2GB
Storage- HDD 2TB
Im also open to building one from scratch, but as I said, I have barely any idea what to do so im really wary of buying a bunch of parts, only to get everything put together and not work.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
You need a new PC.
Are you willing to build one, or does it have to be a prebuilt?
1 Like
Im open to either, on one hand i want a pre built because I cant ruin it very easily unless i decide to play with it in the bathtub, but upgrading parts on them can do more harm than good from what ive read.
On the other hand part of me wants to build my own because i can upgrade later for a lot cheaper instead of buying a whole new PC, but I get so confused as to what I need. Physically putting it together seems easy. The second it starts talking about BIOS, drivers, and installing the OS, im completely lost.
Most pre builts these days are just companies that put together off the shelf components. Some like Dell/alien ware still have proprietary components though. You pay extra for someone to put out together and install/configure everything and then provide some level of after sales support.
Building your own is cheaper and arguably more rewarding but if you don’t feel confident to install the OS and possibly do some trouble shooting then maybe pre built is the way to go.
As for upgrading generally all you can upgrade down the line is the gpu. You can add more ram or hard drives but motherboards are generally only compatible with a couple of generations of CPU and if you want anything newer you will require a new mobo. At that point you’re essentially rebuilding the whole computer.
Within your budget you won’t get the “great settings without dropping frames in raids” experience. I run mostly high and ultra settings with some of the post processing turned down and I still have framerate drops in raids. This is almost entirely down to the aged code of wow and it’s inability to properly make use of multi core/thread processors. For reference I spent about $3,000 on my rig about 18 months ago.
You’ll get a decent machine though, you might just need to be ready for frame drops on hectic fights like Hivemind.
At the least I would recommend a 8-core 16 thread cpu. Wow is one those games that benefits greatly from a good cpu so try to get the highest clocked 8/16 cpu that you can.
But don’t skimp on the gpu, spend as much as you can on a Nvidia with 6-8gb Vram.
Get 16gb of system ram.
And obviously get yourself a SSD.
If you can, get yourself a 144hz Freesync 1080p monitor, 1ms response time.
I ended up making a decision on a prebuilt recommendation from a website that actually gave me a lot of information on building PC’s, wepcdotcom they laid out all of the parts for certain budgets and upgrade paths. as well as some prebuilt options for upgrading down the line.
I went with one that has an Intel Core i7-9700F, which from what ive read the intels only have one core, but that one core does very well, just a bit more expensive than say an AMD that has multiple.
The graphics card is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER
1TB hard drive with a 480GB SSD
And 16GB of RAM.
Do you forsee any issues with it? Pretty much anything i bought wouldve been an upgrade as far as i could tell, and I bought it from Best Buy because i dont trust 3rd party sellers on Amazon.
The i7 will be fine and a GTX 1660 Super is more than enough for WoW. The i7 9700f is 8 cores and 8 threads though, not one core.
Replace that i7 with a Amd ryzen 3700X. You can use the money you save from that to upgrade the graphics card or your monitor.
Blizzard will probably get shadowlands to utilize more cores/threads so it’s better if you try to future proof your purchase.
Is this true? Haven’t seen anything about this in the patch notes or in people’s feedback on the Alpha. AFAIK, the multicore enhancements they could do have already been implemented, and my 8700k still hits 45% usage max.
i haven’t done any raids but so far today just leveling it’s yet to go beyond 35% on mine 
1 Like
The moar corez nonsense knows no end
8/16 helps over 6/12 in some games, and if you do a bunch of stuff simultaneously
I’m sure OP’s new 8/8 will be fine, given their stated needs
2 Likes
I don’t think wow is broken or needs updating because it doesn’t use moar corez. It is the nature of the game. There is a reason why intel cpu’s are still the best for gaming in general, it isn’t just warcraft.
1 Like
Go to youtube.com and search " World of Warcraft 8.3 CPU Roundup - Zen2 Vs 9th Gen Intel - Raid Benchmarks"
The video is by Hardware Numb3rs
The last time that YouTuberwas showed on these forums it caused some people to have a fit FYI
But I do agree with his point on the 3600 the best price/performance for raid ready
That benchmark showed that all modern Ryzen and Intel CPUS are good performers in WoW.
Noticeably, Ryzen chips had slightly better 0.1% lows in certain scenarios (flight path scene, world quests, dungeons), and only losing to Intel in 0.1% lows in raids.
It also showed Intel chips had better 1% lows and much higher average FPS across the board.
But none of that really matters - it just goes to show they all work really well because none of them had terrible showings.
I will add that it does feel pretty damn good to have had amazing performance that not only rivals the mighty Ryzen 3950x, but can still give better average FPS in most games, for nearly three years running.
But let’s not forget people said it wasn’t worth the $359, and the 1600 was just as good 
So your proof for this:
Is this?
Do you have any actual proof?