You can “play” WoW just fine on computers that are much older and less powerful than any of those builds that you listed.
There are a few things worth mentioning regarding the hardware in your builds:
The first thing is, why are you so locked into Intel builds? A couple of years ago AMD began releasing their X3D CPUs, which have much larger L3 cache than most CPUs. 95% of games see a benefit from this extra L3 cache, but how much each game will benefit varies wildly depending on the game and how effectively it is able to utilize that extra cache. While many games only benefit 5-15%, others see colossal improvements upwards of 60% or more.
World of Warcraft is one of those games, and benefits more from an X3D CPU than almost any other game except for maybe Microsoft Flight Simulator. So much so, that even the oldest X3D CPU (5800X3D) still slaughters even the newest, fastest, most expensive Intel CPU (14900KS) in WoW.
Of course, the 13 and 14-series Intel CPUs have issues with power consumption and long-term degradation that are only now starting to be addressed, making them impossible to recommend. Going further back to 12th gen and even 10th gen Intel CPUs will give you even worse performance relative to AMD.
Find an AMD DDR5 setup that uses a 7800X3D. If you are on a budget, you could also get a cheaper DDR4 setup with a 5800X3D. Both would beat anything with a current Intel CPU in it when playing WoW.
It’s important to understand the demands that WoW places on your computer, so that you can choose your system accordingly.
First of all, understand that WoW is not very multi-threaded. It does most of it’s main tasks in 1-2 threads, with a few additional threads handling auxiliary tasks. The result is that single-core performance is paramount, and it will rarely fully utilize more than 4 cores. That means that even with a CPU that “only” has 8 cores, you will still have plenty of extra cores to handle things like Discord and other programs in the background while you play WoW.
Overall, CPU performance will be most important in situations where you have a large number of people in close proximity to one another (Lots of interactions between characters occuring). This can include capital cities, large raids, large battlegrounds, etc. It’s normal for FPS to dip low in these situations, even with the best CPUs, although a faster CPU does help.
GPU performance will be most important in outdoor situations, like when you are flying high above the world with your view distance set to maximum. Mainly just lots and lots of textures that need to be rendered.
Most progression content fits into the first category rather than the 2nd, which is why CPU performance is generally the most important metric for overall WoW performance. If you mostly care about your FPS while doing World Quests, then your GPU comes into play a bit more.
Finally, understand that the game has a LOT of settings to reduce the demand on your hardware. The vast majority of these settings will reduce the demand on your GPU far more than it will reduce the demand on your CPU. That is again, further reason why it’s important to have the best CPU you can get, even if it means skimping on your GPU a bit.
︎Motherboard: MSI H610M DDR4