All about gaming

First from the official web site the requirements are

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/faq.html#sys

PC System Requirements

* OS: Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4); Windows XP (Service Pack 2)
* Processor: Intel Pentium3 800MHz or AMD Athlon 800MHz
* Memory:
o 512 MB RAM,
o 1GB RAM is recommended
* Video:
o Minimum: 32MB 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting, such as an NVIDIA GeForce 2 class card or above.
o Recommended: 64MB VRAM 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability, such as an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 class card or above.
* Sound: DirectX compatible sound card

Mac System Requirements

* OS: Mac OS X 10.3.9 or newer required
* Processor:
o 933MHz G4/G5 processor,
o 1.8GHz G5/Intel or better recommended
* RAM:
o 512MB RAM,
o 1GB DDR RAM is recommended
* Video:
o NVIDIA or ATI graphics processor with 32MB VRAM,
o 64MB VRAM recommended

All Platforms

* Controls: A keyboard and mouse are required. Input devices other than a mouse and keyboard are not supported
* Connectivity:You must have an active broadband internet connection to play.
* Mouse: Multi-button mouse with scroll wheel recommended.

Note: System Requirements are subject to change.

end quote

I'd go with an Intel P4 3 ghz machine with 4 GB RAM and one of the latest 256 MB graphics cards, and a very good monitor say 19" or 21" because the graphics is the majority of the game. A good sata drive and DVD player.

Don't, I say don't, buy a Dell, HP, IBM or any name brand PC - go to a local shop that will build this for you, ask around and find one with a good rep. Make sure they use generic parts. Problem with Dell, HP, etc is upgrades and spare parts later.

Now they say W2K or Win XP. Personally I'd try using Ubuntu Linux and buy Crossover to run it on first. But if you must go Windows, then Win 2K, it has less troubles with WGA than XP.

And a good, wide, high speed Broadband Internet, the faster, the less likely you'll get killed easily.

As far as processors, I haven't had any cooling issues with an AMD and mine has only a standard cooler. If you are building a high end system, then a Core2Duo is a better value than the high end AMDs, but it is unlikely you will need somethign of that power.

Liquid cooled systems are required if you are going to go crazy with overclocking, and frankly you don't need to do that for WoW. If you are concerned about heating issues, a good case with room for fans for both intake (on the front) and output (on the back) are helpful.

I would not suggest (sorry Ernest) anything other than Win XP, since inevitably you will find some newer games that run on XP only.

I would recommend as much RAM as you can. 1GB is a minimum for a gaming rig, and some games work better with more.

As for video cards, I've used both nVidia and ATI based cards. General impressions out there are that nVidia are faster and ATI has better image quality. With both manufacturers, it can be confusing as to which card is faster and which is a better buy. For example an ATI x1600 is not faster an X800. And to make it even more fun, there are different "flavours" of X1600 (Pro, XT) which differ from each other.

There are benchmarking sites out there which compare. Some of them use real software to test:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2381&p=4

You can google to find more.

You will have the choice of buying a motherboard with either AGP or PCI Express. I would suggest going PCI Express as that give you more options in the future should you decide to upgrade. But thats a budget thing - AGP is fine if money is tight.

When I look at the system requirements for Warcraft, they don't look very demanding, which means you should be able to run it fairly fast on budget equipment.

I shop at Tigerdirect - they have "barebones" kits that bundle components and let you add stuff in. There are other places that do this as well. Shop the specials. You can get a decent case, PSU, MB and CPU for $199 USD if you show well. To that you would add a CD ROM (or CD RW or DVD/CD RW) video card, HD, and OS.

Has he built a system before?

James

AMD has worked great for me with WoW (World of Warcraft), as has Intel. Choice of CPU is really a matter of preference right now.

I've never had to use water cooling on a CPU unless I was overclocking it, which can make a cheaper CPU run like a more expensive one, or can make a computer cook itself and die horribly, depending on how you do it. I don't recommend overclocking and haven't found it necessary in years.

One thing to keep in mind with WoW (and some other games), is they aren't built correctly for multiple CPUs/cores, so you don't get as much mileage out of a dual-core CPU as you would like. A higher clock-speed single-core will give you better performance in WoW than a lower-speed dual-core. (Blizzard, the creators of WoW, have some data on this on their forums.)

So, my recommendations are:

AMD single-core Athlon 64 with as high a clock-speed as you can afford

Motherboard that supports that CPU

2 Gig of RAM (speed/type based on your motherboard - faster is nice but not critical)

PCI-Express video card - ATI and NVidea are about the same, so get whichever - with as much RAM as you can afford (512 is great)

SATA-2 Hard Drive, size doesn't matter much for a gaming machine, but make sure it's not too small (speed is more important, since it affects load-time as you move around in WoW)

That will give you a serious gaming machine with a good experience in World of Warcraft. I've built several of these and they work great.

Also, it helps if you get a good/great monitor. Bigger is nice, very low response time (if you get LCD instead of CRT) is more important.

Much depends on what people notice.

If you define your limits its easier to make a recommendation.

For example - eye candy. Some people notice great textures and AA/AF filtering, some people don't. Some would rather have great speed at 1024/768, others can't give up 1600x 1200.

Personally never played Warcraft, but I play a much more demanding online game - Battlefield 2.

For a time I had a 512 MB card of similar spec to 256 card I replaced, and noticed no difference at all. If I had the choice between 512 and slower graphics processor versus 256 and faster one, there is no doubt in my mind which one I would choose -the one with the better GPU.

The most important thing is the Graphics card, followed by the RAM, then the CPU with Graphics cards, the better the graphics processor, the better the card, with some caveats. Some manufacturers sell dumbed down cards - where they make a cheaper card by reducing the number of pipelines into the same processor. Not all cards are equal.

James

I've never played Warcraft, but for my kind of games (first person shooters) a wireless mouse is essential.

You may also want to think about an upgraded sound card - the ones on the MB do have some overhead and are pretty basic. The SoundBlaster Live series are still pretty cheap and compatible with just about every game out there. No need to go for the more expensive SB audigy unless you are setting up your PC as a home theatre.

Personally I prefer headphones over speakers. I use inexpensive noise cancelling ones to cancel out the noise of the fans.

When I've had cooling problems they have been with the video card itself, not the CPU thats been the problem. You can spend a little or a lot on a CPU fan, but don't neglect the case fan(s) as well.

James

If you choose AMD, the Athlon 64FX is still AMD's recommended chip for gaming.
I have an Athlon 6400 X2, and it seems to work fine for me.
AMD chips do heat up more than Intels latest line, and they draw more power as well. I have not kept up with Intel's line for gaming though, so no recommendation there.

ATI and nVidia both have excellent video cards, but I keep hearing that nVidia's has better drivers.

2GB RAM is recommended.

Right now, Intel has slightly more processing power than AMD but AMD chips still use less electricity and produce less heat but the difference in all three categories is negligible.

Price is pretty much the same too (in Australia at least). Intel still hasn't implemented 64 bit processing as well as AMD yet.

Both will perform well so it depends on which brand you would prefer or which motherboard offers you the best features. Water cooling isn't nesasary unless you are over clocking which is not something for the novice to try. I've had my Athlon 3800 running in an Australian summer with no Air-conditioning (30 to 40 degrees C).

Also go with PCI-E, in Perth, Western Australia AGP cards are becoming rarities and PCI-E cards are becoming as cheap as chips (saw one for AU$50 the other day).

You should go for an expensive dual core if you can afford it if not go for a high end single core. In the near future games will be written to take advantage of two cores, for the moment the second core can take over many of the background processes whist the first core handles the game but this advantage is lost if you get a slower dual core.

Heres what I recommend,

AMD:
Athlon X2 4800 or 5000,
Asus M2N Nforce SLI motheboard
2 mid-range to high-end Nvidia video cards.
SATA2 hard drives.

Intel:
Core 2 Duo E6700 (note that the Core 2 Duo model numbers start after the AMD model numbers end, sneaky?)
A SLI motherboad that suports core 2 processors (I dont know any model numbers off the top of my head)
2 mid-range to high-end Nvidia video cards.
SATA2 hard drives.

Sorry about that. I did misread what you wrote.

A LAN version of WoW would certainly be interesting. Doubt it will ever happen, but it would definitely be cool.

The basic rull is that you have to have a good CPU, lots of memory and a good graphic card.
I would recommend to go with core due compatible motherboard as usually it will be compatible to Pentium D and so forth.
As for CPU if you are going on 1 core then get at least 3ghz but you should look at the due core as prices are pretty good.
For graphic card the more you pay the better you get but for reasonable price you can get a good card ATI or Nvidia that will be enough for WOW you can always upgrade later.
Memory is very important so get at least 2gig
high speed (ddr2 or ddr3) memory.
Screen is great for the visual feel of the game and there are 19' - 22' size screen for great prices.
A fast HDD is important as well and you can get a great ones for good prices.
And a fast broadband is important as well.
Have a look on the net in PC magazines site and read some reviews but don't be tempted to buy the most expensive as you can always upgrade.

First off, for most gaming systems nowadays, the following are good rules to follow:
-Mid - high-end CPU: Athlon 64 (AM2, consider dual-core) or Core2 Duo. Avoid Pentium, Celeron, and Sempron.
-Higher-end VGA: Radeon x1900/1950 series, GeForce 7900/7950 series. Get an apporpriate motherboard if you want to use SLI or Crossfire for higher video performance.
-A lot of newer games utilize more memory than ever (I've seen Oblivion scale upto 750MB!), and running on top of Windows, 2GB is a good choice.

Personally, if I were to build a system today I'd go with a Core2 Duo E6600 (2.4GHz, 4MB cache), an Intel p965 or nForce 680i based motherboard, 2GB of higher-speed (and potentially over-clockable) RAM, and at least a GeForce 7950GT or an ATI Radeon x1950 Pro.

Also, as far as the comment about AMD running hot, that's rubbish. The current generation of Athlon64 processors don't run that hot at all, neither does the Core2 Duo. The current Pentium-based CPUs, however, are hogs and consume a lot of energy and run very warm.
No matter which way you go, I'd recoomend also getting a good separate heatsink/fan unit.

The main thing to keep in mind when building a gaming rig is that every component will take a real beating. This is a business where a lot of components are 'identical' on paper but there's a huge difference in practice.
Quality matters here. You need quality components that can handle the high workload that gaming puts on them. Cheaper components will lead to frustratingly random failures that will be difficult to diagnose.

Here's some things to consider.

- Power supply(PSU). DO NOT SKIMP HERE!! High end processors, Hard drives, and Graphics cards draw a lot of current. the PSU needs to be able to supply that current without noise or brownouts. PSU's are a lot like cheap stereo's, you'll see a lot of high watt numbers that are outright false or sneaky advertising. Stick with a proven, well reviewed brand and model. PC Power & Cooling, SPI, Antec are just a few examples to get you started. Get a 500W minimum. And modular plugs are nice, but not neccessary.

- Cooling/Case. Get a case not just for looks, but one that provides good cooling. Look at the case, it's fan locations, and imagine the airflow path and see if there will bee good flow. A properly designed system should pull air in from the bottom front of the tower, and expel it out through the upper rear, through the PSU. It should cross the CPU and Graphics card on the way.
IMO, all exterior fans _except_ the PSU fan should be pulling air into the case, and all the air should exhaust out the PSU. A good PSU will have a fan on the bottom, pulling air across the CPU and another fan at the back exhausting it out. The system should create positive air pressure in the case. This gives you more, denser cooling air into every nook and cranny of the system. Watch for places where air can leak and cause a bypass of the airflow. Missing PCI slot backplates or empty drive bays are a good example. I often cover empty drive bays with duct tape (behind the faceplate for obvious aesthetic reasons).

- Get a good motherboard with all the features you _need_ but don't worry about gimmicky features. I personally prefer and recommend Asus motherboards. They have an excellent reputation in both the commercial and gaming industries. They tend to use high quality components and have well engineered, multi-layer board designs with properly laid out ground plane layers. I know there are gamer types out there who will say nonsense like "Screw Asus, the sukitake model wazoo 5000 get's 4% better renderfish benchmark scores" or some such nonsense. Most often there are boards and brands that will trade some stability for a tiny bit of percieved speed. Todays systems are so fast that stability is much more important.

- AMD vs Intel. Whoever told you "Apparently, AMD got heated out easily & you need some sort of water to be installed inside the system for cooling effect." is misinformed and slightly confused. Many gamers _Choose_ to water cool their systems in order to overclock them and wring that few extra benchmark score points out of their systems, mostly for bragging rights to their friends. It's really not necessary. Your friend may have gotten confused because the AMD chips are more popular among gamers (with good reason) and are also easy to overclock and water cool. Personally, I prefer AMD. At this point Intel is playing catch-up in a few key areas. AMD in particular has an advantage in bus efficiency. AMD's Hypertransport bus is blazing fast and allows fast access to memory, peripheral busses, and other cores. This makes a particular difference in dual core applications with PCI-X Graphics. I would recommend a dual core Athlon-64. Now there are Intel Core2 Duo fans waiting to scream at me, and yes the C2D is a good chip, but it's newer and still has some bus performance issues that Intel tries to compensate for with large cache sizes. This is fine for number crunching, but for games where you have to move out of the cache and onto the bus evetually (ie the massive data pumped to the grapphics card) you start to see the penalty. However, it would still be a fnie choice. Also remember that the gamer market is about overkill. Your nephew would be thrilled with an Athlon 64 FX 60. This is the last of the socket 939 chips and doesn't leave the upgrade options, but on the other hand, it's probably more CPU than you need anyway. After all, unless he's going to spend thousands on dual SLI graphics cards and a wall size flat panel with ridiculous resolutions, the CPU will be waiting for other parts of the computer most of the time anyway. In the real world, 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 are about the max usable resolution that normal people can afford and moer than you need. After all, that's HDTV class megapixels. Anyway, if you wanted to save a few bucks, the FX60 and a good 939 motherboard would be less right now. Or go all out with the AM2 Athlon 64 FX-62 and an AM2 motherboard. This has all kinds of room to grow and expand, but at more cost.

- Graphics. This is as big a holy war as AMD vs Intel, and I say buy whatever quality brand PCI-X board meets your needs, and is on sale. You'll want 128MB memory at the minimum and 256 is a better choice since you can't upgrade the video RAM. ATI or nVidia. I'm a bit of an nVidia fan myself, not because their hardware is better, but because their drivers tend to be better, and more mature. And drivers can have a huge impact on GPU (graphics processor) performance. You don't need SLI(dual graphics boards working together), but you can prepare for it by getting a system and graphics board that's capable of it in case you want to upgrade later.

-RAM... Get name brand, matched pairs of RAM modules and put them in the proper slots on your mobo to work in interleaved mode (see your mobo manual). You'll need at least 1GB minimum. 2GB would be sweet. A motherbaord with 4 RAM slots instead of 2 also gives you more expansion options.

- Hard drives. These days SATA IDE is pretty much standard, and cheap. Don't bother using onboard RAID if your motherboard supports it.
I'd say get 2 drives, and use one for the OS, apps and games, the other for data (ISO Images, pictures, MP3's etc.) and backups of drive 1. 120GB+ for drive 1, and 250GB+ for drive 2. Watch for sales, big $ can be saved here. Also, I personally wouldn't own a Western Digital, no matter what kind of sale they have. They have had quality issues for the last 15 years. I'd look at Seagate, or Maxtor.

- Monitor. Remember, this is your primary interface to your computer. You'll be looking at it for hours on end. Personally, I'd go with a nice 19" Mitsubishi or Samsung CRT monitor here. LCD's are awesome, and I use one myself for my main workstation, but for gaming, they can be quite expensive to get one that is suitable, and even then you likely won't be as happy with it as a CRT, though the day of the gaming LCD is coming soon.

- KB/Mouse. Most PC games use the keyboard as the primary input device, along with the mouse so get something good here. Personally I avoid Microsoft hardware products as they contract them out to the lowest korean or chinese bidder.
A Logitech KB mouse combo would be nice.
Personally, I'd get a buckling spring, mechanical key switch keyboard. These are far superior to the crap membrane keyboards floating around out there now.
You can find more from here:
http://www.clickykeyboards.com/
Another example is here:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/8396/
IMO forget the 'gaming' keyboards.
As for the mouse. I personally prefer the simple black Logitech corded optical.
However, you'll probably want to look at the Logitech laser gaming mouse.

- Software. If you want to game, keep the system lean. Don't install a lot of crap that runs at startup. Avoid trendy system tweaks and the like. Certainly I wouldn't install Microsoft Office ( at least not with indexer enabled) If he needs to type the occasional document, OpenOffice is much better about not changing system DLLs and settings without asking like MS Office does. And OpenOffice.org is more than enough office sute for 90% of users anyway, especially if you install OpenOffice Premium (Now called Oxygen office I think, google it). Also do not install security weak programs like many P2P apps and IM clients.
Uninstall outlook, install Firefox, Thunderbird, Azureus, Limewire, GTK+/Gimp, Paint.net, Picassa, 7z, and OpenOffice. This should get you started on free, quality, reasonably safe software. File hippo and google should find you these.
Use good anti-malware programs. Good <> expensive. Good means something that works, as well as something you'll use. Personally I use a combination of the following free products.
- Antivir Antivirus scanner
- SpyBot Search & Destroy
- Spyware Blaster
- CrapCleaner

Also remember to disk scan and defrag your hard drives regularly. Disk Keeper lite works well for this.

Well, that's all for now I guess.
Hope this helps,
Tachyon

CPU: 3 ghz minimum
RAM: 1gb min (2gb preferably)
Video Card: 256mb PCIX... any video card in the $175-$250 range should be sufficient. I recommend 256mb 7600GT by XFX....
Hard Drive: SATA2 250gb 7200rpm or get a 150gb WD Raptor for 10k rpm
PSU: 500w minimum with 25A or more on 12v rail.
One note: the video card mentioned above is SLI compatible, so you can always add a second one later for increased performance.
As far as motherboards: GigaByte makes a good board, and I like ECS also... Asus has it's fans, but I've had LOTS of problems with Asus boards; esp. the P5ND2-SLI....

Apparently some people haven't the slightest understanding of the basic system architecture.
To say nonsense like "Game X is single threaded, so dual core / SMP is a waste" is just stupid.
First off, I question how you know anything about the threadedness of a given game.
But it doesn't really even matter if the game is multi-threaded or not. Any reasonably modern OS, even dinasaur kernels like Windows, supoprt SMP and will load balance the system across the available CPU's on a per process basis. For example, if you are running game X, the system will run the OS kernel on CPU 0, and the main game process on CPU 1. It doesn't take much brains to figure out that even this will give a nice performance boost.
Given that multi-core is not that much more money, and getting cheaper, and that applications are only going to be more threaded, not less. It makes sense to invest in multi-core. As someone who has used SMP systems as his main personal workstation for years, I'm well aware of the everyday performance, and productivity enhancements of multi-processing systems. And dual-core systems are even more efficient versions of dual SMP systems.

Given alll the other ridiculous, overkill options that most of the gamer types seem to think they need, I'm shocked to hear anyone say you don't need something as effective and reasonably priced as multi-core, which gives a performance imporvement to the entire system.

Asus P5N32-SLI Premium WiFi NVIDIA Socket ATX 775 Motherboard / WiFi / Audio / PCI Express / Dual Gigabit LAN / S/PDIF / USB 2.0 & Firewire / Serial ATA / RAID
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz Processor
2 GB DDR2 Ram 533/667Mhz
two 250 GB SATA2 Raid Hard Drives
16X Dual Layer DVD Burner
52X CD-RW/ DVD ROM Drive
ATI X1900 XTX 512MB Video Card
XP Pro Wireless Keyboard and Mouse

I rely on this site for complete, objective reviews: http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/index.php
I don't buy the current configuration but go back up to 12 months because I feels it's a better value with nearly the same performance. I used to live in Singapore and could get most of the brand name items from Sim Lim. My favorite shops are Bliss or Fuwell but you can do most of your shopping from here: http://sg.hardwarezone.com/priceguide/download.php

But check out www.velocitymicro.com. We have a good entry level gaming machine for well under $1000--our holiday edition--and we ship to Singapore. We also offer a lifetime upgrade plan and kick ass support.

IMHO, core duo is the way to go with a gaming rig, until AMD manages to amaze me again.

Case: New Aluminium ATX Midi Tower(Wave) + Musketeer Display
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme X6800 (2.933GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, LGA775)
Motherboard: ASUS P5N32-SLI Deluxe PCI-Express (nForce4 x16 SLI)
Memory: 2GBytes (2x 1GByte) OCZ PC6400 RAM @ 4-4-4-15 2T @ DDR2-800
Hard drive(s): Maxtor 6H500S0 500GB SATA, 16MB cache
Screen: 20.1in ViewSonic VP2030B (1600x1200) DVI
Graphics card: 2x NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX 512MiB in SLI
Optical drive #1: Sony DW-G120A 16x DVD ReWriter
Optical drive #2: Sony CRX320EE 16x DVD-ROM
Sound: Creative SoundBlster X-Fi Fatal1tyFPS
Speakers Creative T7900
Modem: None
Networking: Gigabit Ethernet from nForce4 SLI chipset. Marvell PCIe Gbe
Ports connectivity: 10x USB2.0 (2x top, 4x rear I/O), 1x FireWire400, 2x RJ45 (Gigabit), audio, optical/coaxial S/PDIF-out, PS/2, eSATA, parallel
Operating system: Windows XP MCE 2005

We have been looking into the Battlefield 1942, it looks like it would be a good one!

We mostly play first person shooter style.. CS, Swat 4, Unreal Tournament, Joint operations, and are always looking into others.. Really like the Co-op style games.

The only bad thing, don't like the ones over the internet that has to connect to a game server and all that mess. Just plain ol' Lan games is mostly what we look for.

It is always a good time, lots of freinds, pizza, soda and of coarse as you said trash talking is required :-)

Cheers-

I dont think right now is the best time to build a gaming rig, while prices are going down, they will plummet within the next couple months especially with the release of Vista.
The thing is no gaming PC is solely built for gaming, it is used for daily living. With that said, I'd recommend AMD 64 chip, 256 or 512 mb nvidia pci express card, dfi lan party mobo, liquid cooling for the processor and 2 gigs of ram. OCZ is one of the best.
The reason for these specific items is that they are overclockable for when, in 6 months , the pc is obsolete. Hope that helps

I think the best place to start is the purpose... That should tell you how to design your PC. Therefore, you want your "muscle" in the following places:

1) Processor: Duo Core (I prefer Intel) is the best shot. But, they can be pricey. Yet, anything 2.8 and above (NO Celeron) will give you decent to a great experience. In the AMD World, you can match that speed and price accordingly.

NOTE: My former comrade-in-arms from the Marines works there (Marketing Engineer). I'm a loyal Intel buyer now. Plus, quad core is coming and will smash the competition...

2) Memory: Definitely, get your memory (RAM) to nothing less then 1 Gig. I run 2 gigs of memory in my Gaming Laptop and it screams! Make sure you know the max memory the Motherboard can support.

3) Graphics: This will be the term of the day... graphics, graphics, graphics! This will make or break your gaming experience. You may not, necessarily, have to get the latest ATI / NVidia board out since "yesterday". But, you want to get something that has a decent GPU and (onboard) memory for the buck. I would say to not let the memory get NO LESS THAN 256 megs. Once again, this depends on how much a gamer your nephew really is? But, you can never go wrong with a great Graphics Card.

4) Storage: You will needs a large "whiskey locker" to store all this data. The amount of storage or drives you purchase will depend on what your motherboard can support. You can get a large drive (300 Gigs and up). Or, break that down based on individual drives. This comes down to how you want to distribute / protect your drive data; e.g. RAID, seperate drives for System files, one kept seperate for Game files, etc. A tip to getting a drive will be to purchase what a place like "FRY's" has out of box; i.e. OEM drives, etc. Ensure you get warranty (s) etc. to protect your "junk".

5) Chassis: Do you want to mod the case? Get it pre-modded? Tight on Real Estate? So, get something that will fit in your environment. The last thing you want is a Swamp Cooler Sized Chassis in a broom closet-sized room with an even smaller desk. If you have a lot of beefy peripherals in your PC, ensure your chassis has adequate ventilation and fans. Unfortunately, some fans will function more quiet than others. This is a good question to ask your "knowledgable" PC Sales Person ;-)

6) Last, Monitor: This is going to be strictly up to your preference. Right now, you can get decent sized (19" - 21") LCD monitors for under $400.00. And if you are tight on funds? I would look at refurbished products. It sounds ironic. Yet, I have 20.1" Flat Panel (LCD) Viewsonic with a Full Warranty. I had it overnighted from an eBay reseller for under $350. And all my games come in great! I could be an exception to the rule. But, it will be all about your research. And places like Costco, Sam's Club, Fry's etc. all have decent pricing on the 20" and below to make room for the larger LCD TV style monitors.

It's a lot of data (general, at best). But, I'll keep it short... I would recommend starting at places like CNet.com to get decent reviews of products; i.e. graphics, processor, drives, etc. You can check Pricewatch.com to help you gauge or get an idea of pricing.

Good luck.

AMD has came out with a new processor socket...it is called am2...amd and ati are the way to go...since amd's purchase of ati the combo of a system board manufacturer and graphics controller in one combo is the way to go since amd and ati are now one...it is like the Nforce mobo and sli graphics cards by nvidia...but to the next power...go am2 and ati graphics to fit the mobo and you will not be disappointed!!!
as far as using water to cool the mobo...as long as you do not over clock there is no need to use it...

Apart from the WoW requirements list on its box saying you need a broadband connection, the hardcore WoW gamers around here say you're wasting your time if you don't have broadband for it. Many cite a better game with a larger broadband connection.

Mind you they were talking 512/1GB as against 64/128 ADSL service. Dial up is a 56 kbps modem, with usual actual service of around 44 kbps - just doesn't do it for these guys. Mind you when they play there's heaps of them on the server. If I could get a licence to set up a local battlenet server for WoW I'd have about 10,000 clients from the local high schools alone. That and Oblivion are the two biggies around here.

I don't play WoW myself, my dial up is usually around the 36 kbps mark or lower. One guy tried it from here, couldn't even log onto the server - timed out.

I built the system i'm using now 4 years ago and i'm yet to find a game it can't play well

OS:windows 2000 sp4
PROCESSOR: 1)pentium 4 xeon processor @2.4ghz
2)pentium 4 xeon processor @2.4ghz
MB: Asus PCDL-Duluxe
RAM: 4 gigs pc2700
Video: ATI Radeon 9100 64mb ram
Sound: Soundblaster Live!
Hard drives: 1) Sata Maxtor Diamondmax 180gb
2) Sata Maxtor Diamondmax 100gb
3) Ata Maxtor Diamondmax 100gb
CD: 1)Plextor 48x/24x/48x CD-RW
2)Lite-on 16x/52x/36x/52x DVD,CD-RW
3)Lite-on 16x/8x/12x/48x/32x/52x DVD-RW
Veiwsonic VG900b LCD monitor

This is including the upgrades i have added over time. WHen i built it 4 years ago it almost cost me 9k. the prices on these items have dropped considerably since. SInce this is a dual processor system you will have to have an os that will support it. With a little tweaking and burning in i've yet to find a better system to replace it with.

It depends on the amount of cash you want to spend. Just six months ago I built my dream machine for $2,300.00 here are the specs for my new PC.

Mother Board DFI LANPARTY UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert

Video card BFG 7900 GTX OC 512 MB lifetime warranty x2

Ram DDR 400 1 GB Kingston

CPU AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2MB Cache 2000MHz FSB

DVD Burner Plextor PX-760A DVD?R/RW

Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 300GB 7200 16MB Serial ATA-300

Sound Card Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic PCI

OS Windows XP Pro 64 Bit.

I am only adding this so that people understand that the power supply is a bit overlooked here, IMHO.

Many have stated that you should get a 500+ Watt PS, but failed to mention where/how that power should be distributed, How noisy/quiet it should be, what about +12V rails with regards to Xfire and dual SLI, continual output, efficiency, etc... I did not read all of the replies in this complete thread and appologize if someone covered this already, and I am not about to go into all the specifics, but you should research this information before just buying any ol' 500+W PS.

Here is a link to a prtty good guide/read that has added links for just about everything stated:

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=136602

There is even a a link to a PS calculator which may be most helpful to some of you total geeks, heheh...

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/

There are a lot of other guides and info pages out there, but this one has soo many links to actual PS's and other cool software, I thought you could use this first.

Good luck!

R3D

Hi!
Before you decide, visit this page: www.airis.es
And look for their Gamer Xtreme machine. It is well configured for gamming. With WoW, you will not take full advantage of the dual core; but (whilst I recommend AMD 64 for serious computing) to run DirectX, it is slightly better the Intel core, and you'll notice it. With the model I suggest, you will be ready for the next six months in PC games. I can't assure beyond, as the industry moves so fast. The main concern now is the motherboard. Here I can't be of help, as I'm more oriented to process/engineering computing than to gamming. But I think you will no need too much slots (and better you'll get XPCI than normal PCI)
One thing you forget is Heat dissipation. Better you think in a good set of controlled fans, and preferably of the low noise type.
Regards
MaeseRalf

I used to think that if you built a machine with absolute best highest end components that were available that it would last you for years to come. This was a rather silly idea. I build computers for many different types of customers at work and I need to give people HONEST opinions about what is right for them.

What you want to do is build a stable system, that is unless you enjoy tinkering and overclocking and tweaking. Primarily you want to put in your favorite game and play. In my experience this steers me in the direction of an Intel processor. Also as a note I have found that with AMD processors if the system should reboot unexpectedly it will kick you into the BIOS, and while this is not a HUGE concern for any advanced PC user, for the beginner or intermediate user it can be a little scary.

At the moment the true speed king is the Intel Dual Core system. If you are on a budget something like the Pentium D 945 gives you a very good price / performance product. If you want to spend more you can step up to a Core 2 Duo E6400 or higher and if you have no issues spending over $1000 (Canadian Dollars) then you would get the Core 2 Extreme X6800. Next you want a motherboard to host this CPU, I stick with the tried and true ASUS line of mainboards. When I am choosing a board I go for one that can grow with the customer, this means that if you choose to buy the Pentium D processor , the board also supports future generation processors so that you can upgrade fairly easily. A good reasonably priced board is the ASUS P5B or P5B Deluxe. Now we want RAM, I would go with a higher end memory, something from say Corsair, OCZ, etc. Not the budget Value RAM. You get what you pay for. There are different speed standards. DDR 400, DDR2 533, DDR2 667, DDR2 800, DDR2 1066. For my money I would go with the DDR2 800 stuff, you should get about 2GB of memory, this will ensure that the system will handle any game you throw at it, also for media applications like video editing, or other content creations tasks you will have plenty of system resources to make short work of any task. For a hard drive I tend to stay away from a manufacturer?s lower end or mainstream stuff, so for instance with Western Digital, Instead of using the WD2500JS I would go with the WD2500KS or even better yet the WD2500YS drives. My brand preferences are Seagate and Western Digital at the moment. If you have to scrimp and save and pinch pennies, do not do it on the hard drive. All your information is on it, when it fails, you will have to start from scratch. A good idea for a gamer is to buy two drives, One higher end main drive and one mainstream cheaper drive. Use an imaging tool Like Norton Ghost 10.0 to make a back up image of your main high end drive to your lower end secondary drive in order to plan for the day when the drive fails. Now a lot of people may just suggest a RAID configuration with 2 hard drives that are mirrored, however there is a small performance hit when dealing with mirroring. So if you happen to be trying to squeek every last bit of performance out of your machine you may want to avoid this.

One thing to keep in mind is that you are building a gaming machine that very likely will be made to really work, so it is in your best interests to purchase a Good case, something that is not cheap and flimsy and comes with a cheap power supply. As a general rule of thumb if you are choosing anything better than a Pentium D 820 Processor you need to have a minimum 450W power supply. Sparkle (SPI) makes a good power supply, they also manufacture power supplies for many of the name brand companies. You also need to ensure you have adequate cooling in your case.

Last I want to address video cards. I personally recommend the ATI based cards because there have been issues with NVidia based cards being Finicky with their divers. Now this is not a major issue or really a concern at all for a advanced user, but for a novice, they don?t want to have to be configuring and playing with drivers to get the best results, so simply for ease of use I go with the ATI cards. And now a matter of price and what model to get. I stick to the Asus brand of cards because they should have no problems at all working in an ASUS mainboard and I don?t put in the top of the line video card that can cost you $600 - $1000 (Canadian Dollars). It makes no sense to drop that kind of money on a card. Buy a card 1 or 2 generations old, You will get your best price for performance mix there. It makes more sense to spend $100 - $200 on a card now and then again in say 6 ? 8 months or a year, In the long run you spend less money and still enjoy a decent machine. I personally have an ASUS EAX1600PRO 512MB Card.

Hope this information helps you in your decision making.

I recently 'built' three gaming PC's all in the upper 600 Euro range. Building your own PC isn't too hard, as even I can do it:-)

The one I use is a MSI K8N Diamond SLi, AMD 3800, 2 Gb ram, 256Mb video, 1*250Gb SATAII (16Mb) and USB/IDE HDD's.
It will run almost any game maxed to the limit.
I really wanted to use a U320-SCSI device
(it still can't be beaten by SATA), but my budget didn't allow this 'feature'.
The best investment I recently did was ditching the 19" LCD and getting a 22" CRT.
OK, my 'workspace'is very crowded, but the graphics are really very good!

It is all about personal preferences and your budget.

My next project will be an ultra-quit PC....

A Valid Credit Card.
A Phone.
A phone Number.

WoW!

As you can gather from the chatter in this thread, this is a real loaded question.

The best answer really depends on what games you will be playing. If it is just World of Warcraft, then you get away with spending a little less. If you are looking to play Crysis next year, then you'll have to spend some more money.

If I were buying a PC right now, I'd be looking at the Intel Core 2 duo - it is the best gaming chip right now. However, AMD will likely be upping the ante with a new chip before long.

For graphics I prefer nVidia cards, but ATI would be just fine too. Personally, I'd be getting the top of the line from either company, but I think you would be happy with the generation just below that too.

Good luck with the PC building --- it's fun builing a PC too.

If you are interested in any sort of end game raiding or battlegrounds -- you'll need broadband -- and not 768k DSL either. Playing in these environments with 300 ms latency or more will be incredibly frustrating and you will find yourself dead... a lot.

The guys I know who play on dial-up consistently run almost 1 second ping and often closer to 2 in raids. Basically its unplayable at that rate.

If you are just going to be doing some quests and running around killing monsters -- dial up is ok, but that is about it.

It seems that no one has has mentioned the importance of a good gaming mouse. The lowly mouse gets overlooked a lot and I can't begin to say how many amazing computers have crappy $10.00 mice attached to them.

Look for a mouse with bindable buttons and great dpi. I have been using the Razor copperhead for a while and love it. It doesn't have as many buttons as some others, but the on-the-fly sensitivity adjustment is amazing -- especially in FPS games where you can switch from super slow and accurate for sniping to super fast and quick for driving a tank with just clicking and scrolling.

Lots of other great mice out there -- find one you like, but don't settle for a cheapy.

The original question mentioned that the current game of choice was WoW. You didn't have to mention it, it's part of the spec.

When your boss/customer gives you a specification, do you deliberately ignore it because it doesn't use perfect solutions?

As to the game being "SMP safe", that's not the problem. The problem is that most dual-core CPUs are lower power on each core than single-core CPUs for similar pricing. With WoW, a higher speed single core performs better than a lower speed dual core.

You are ignoring the original spec. And your post that I was replying to basically said anyone who doesn't recommend dual core or recommends against it is an incompetent moron. You don't have to mention names when you make broad generalizations like that, but you can certainly expect someone to be possibly insulted by it.

As to your comparisons, please get real: Nobody's PC runs a pacemaker or controls a nuclear warhead. Those operations aren't done on PCs. Things like that are done with specialized hardware, specifically designed for the task at hand.

But WoW was part of the specification of the original question. That makes it relevant. If you choose to ignore the specifications given when you recommend solutions, please, stay away from all the pacemakers and nuclear warheads. Far away. For that matter, if you choose to ignore specifications, please stay away from solution-providing completely. Flip burgers or wait tables or something.

Did you have to use the boot.ini switch? I've had Windows 2003 servers that - without the boot.ini /3GB switch - refused to allow use of the >2GB range to an application.

I would appreciate some details on what client-side app you are running that requires 4GB of RAM (if you can share) and how you configured the client to use that much. Windows does not support Out-of-Box 2GB+ for apps.