Wow on Macbook Pro or Air? helpppp

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First of all, I hope this is the correct forum.

Good morning, I need some guidance as I am planning to upgrade my laptop but I’m not sure which computer is more optimal for gaming.

I currently play on a 2014 Macbook Pro with 8gb ram with intel core i5 2 core xd so clearly any new machine will be a huge upgrade but I’d like to choose well.

I am considering any of the newer Macs with M2 chip (Macbook Air or Pro) the question is regarding the specifications. Clearly 16GB of RAM in either of the two to be able to play the new expansion without a problem.

  • My first question would be, how important is the SSD? Does it affect the performance of the game in any way?
    The base model of the mac includes only 256 gb and increasing it to 512 supposes a considerable price increase, but I don’t know how necessary it would be since WoW is the only game I play and the rest of the memory I use for photos and documents that don’t take up a lot of space.
    One of my main concerns regarding the SSD is that the 256gb model only includes 1 chip, while the 512 model has 2 256 chips, and from what I understand, having 2 chips increases the speed a lot but I have no idea if this affects the game or is it only relevant for people who export heavy videos and that sort of thing.

  • How relevant is the fan playing on Mac?
    The Macbook Air doesn’t come with a fan unlike the Pro, but it’s cheaper and i could use the extra money to bump up the SSD or RAM even more. I’ve seen videos of people playing without problems on the Air but I don’t know how detrimental it would be in the long run to the battery to play without a fan.

The configurations that i can afford are these:

  • Macbook Pro 13’ M2 - 16gb RAM, 8 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores, 256 SSD with fan
  • Macbook Air 13’ M2 - 16gb RAM, 8/8 cores CPU and GPU, 512 SSD fanless

Finally, I must say that I don’t really do heavy content like raids or mythics that require a lot from the machine, I mainly dedicate to farming mounts from old raids, or open world missions, nothing too demanding. I play an average of 4-5 hours a day depending on the case xd.

I hope some expert in this type of thing can guide me a bit, since I already dug deep into the internet looking for answers and I couldn’t find anything similar.

(And before you come to attack me, I don’t plan to build a pc or buy a gaming laptop specifically xd)

Thank you very much in advance :slight_smile:

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If you edit your thread, there will be a drop down to change what forum you want to move the thread to.

I would suggest moving this to the Mac Tech Support forum. Pretty good bunch of knowledgeable Mac users hanging about there.

EDIT: FWIW, for around $20 on Amazon, you can pick up an inexpensive laptop cool’er which is basically a platform for your machine that has 3/4 fans blowing air over the bottom of the computer.

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Second about moving to the Mac forum. I know nothing of Mac’s or how easy it may or may not be to add additional SSD’s (on PC’s its easy and cheap).

The only thing I can add is that with an SSD load times will decrease significantly. If you’re running a standard drive now and it takes you 45 seconds to load the game that will reduce to about 5 seconds or less.

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iIRC, when BfA/Legion first came out, Blizzard listed SSD as a system requirement. They subsequently changed
SSD from being a requirement to being a recommendation but it’s writing on the wall.

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I’ll answer a few things quickly since I’ve owned and played wow on both (air and pro m1 versions and m1 pro currently)
On my m1 pro (16 core) I keep the settings at 4 with distance and environment turned all the way up and play at 120 fps.
With my m1 air (7 core) I had close to the same settings but at 60 fps since that’s all the display can show. The laptop became warm but not unbearable.
With the pro m1 (8 core) the presence of the fan helped keep the laptop cool and was very quiet, near undetectable with game sound. The touch bar is… annoying to me to say the least.
Also, when the fan is running it eats into your battery runtime.

I would go with the 16 core air and upgrade the ssd. The 512 runs dual chips and is considerably faster. Also, with the game size continuing to grow you’ll find little space left on a 256 after wow and the os eat nearly half of it.

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