cheapest possible WOW PC

[rizzaz]

My flatmate has manaaged to get addicted to wow, however their laptop won't play it so she spends all her time (when not sleeping /working) in my room playing on my PC!

Whilst cute at first this is now starting to get annoying so i'm recommending she get her own pc however cost is a major issue....


so whats the cheapest possible rig to play WOW reasonably ( I'm in the uk)

I was thinking maybe one of those new biostar integrated 6100 jobs (would it make a fair job of playing wow?)

cheapest 939 sempron

one of those cheap solution antec cases with an ok psu in

don't need a hard drive (have a spare)

single 512 ram? could get away with 256?

here's the interesting bit she has an ok laptop, i seem to remeber there being a way to use the laptop screen and keyboard as the interface? obviously theres vnc but that wouldn't work to well.... is there a way?

all suggestions appreciated

 

[ixelion]

WoW is not exactly the most graphically advanced game so the 6100 will do fine, and a sempron 2600+ will be the minimum I would go, as for RAM you should really get 512, 256 is gonna be a bit of a problem.

 

[Looney]

Don't go 256... Windows can barely function on 256, let alone running an MMOG as well. 512 MINIMUM... i would go with 1GB personally, since it's so dirt cheap now.

 

[Looney]

BTW, what kind of laptop does she have? She may be able to run WoW on her laptop with a little bit more memory

 

[rizzaz]

cool ok so the motherboards a good idea, 512 min

any thoughts on the idea of using the laptop as the interface hence avoiding the cost of a monitor and keyboard...?

thanks!

 

[Looney]

Nope, can't do that.

 

[rizzaz]

Originally posted by: Looney
BTW, what kind of laptop does she have? She may be able to run WoW on her laptop with a little bit more memory

it's one of the first centrino laptops, a toshiba tecra s1 has a ati mobility radion 9000, i recently discovered it only has a single 256 sitck in !! it just couldn't run wow at all, do you think it was due to the lack of ram??

 

[rizzaz]

Originally posted by: Looney
Nope, can't do that.

darn what about this guide

it talks about using a laptop as a monitor.......

 

[WebDude]

From the link you provided:

I can't run any 3-D games on the MaxiVista display

so it looks like no.
My advice is basically ditto what's been said. WOW doesn't require much in the way of a video card. You really should consider 1gig of ram however. Otherwise when you move around in the game you'll find your hd grinding a lot, and maybe some brief lag (like stuttering) in the video as the new scenery loads.

 

[pukemon]

Originally posted by: rizzaz

Originally posted by: Looney
BTW, what kind of laptop does she have? She may be able to run WoW on her laptop with a little bit more memory

it's one of the first centrino laptops, a toshiba tecra s1 has a ati mobility radion 9000, i recently discovered it only has a single 256 sitck in !! it just couldn't run wow at all, do you think it was due to the lack of ram??

If it has an ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 (it is a discete graphics chip, DirectX 8 compliant I believe, most came with a 32 or 64MB frame buffer) it can play WoW just fine. (it works pretty well on a Dell Inspiron 600m) Make sure you have the newest drivers and at least 512MB of RAM with more being better. That's the cheapest way to go - get a 1GB SO-DIMM for that notebook and you should be set!

 

[thesurge]

anand articles to the rescue

you could probably get those parts for even cheaper now.

 

[rizzaz]

well,

i guess i'll try the extra ram thing and see if that helps first, thanks!

 

[johnnqq]

get a cheap $500 dell with 1gb of ram and stick in a decent video card.

 

[Xyo II]

Originally posted by: johnnqq
get a cheap $500 dell with 1gb of ram and stick in a decent video card.

Right now, I'm installing WOW on the $150 desktop I got on black friday- I stuck in an extra 512, and a fx5200 that I got for $30. It's downloading the latest patch right now, I'll tell you how it runs when it does.

 

[Xyo II]

Just letting you know, I've played it for the last half hour, it's been running fine on low resolution. Have fun :thumbsup:

 

[Sunbird]

why not try to make best of the current situation, like she has to play it on your PC in the nude

 

[Sunrise089]

Originally posted by: Sunbird
why not try to make best of the current situation, like she has to play it on your PC in the nude

:camera: ?

 

[dexvx]

I had a laptop that plays WoW with the following configuration:

1.3Ghz Pentium-M Banias
512MB DDR333
Radeon 9000 32MB

It was choppy as hell every few minutes, especially if you moved zones or were in capital cities. I upgraded to 1GB DDR333, and things were playing smoothly (1280x800 low settings). So I'd recommend 1GB memory MINIMUM.

Any modern graphics card will do (I'd recommend 64MB), but if you want to play on high settings, you'd need a Radeon9700 or better. Pretty much any modern CPU will work fine, celeron, Sempron, P4, etc. This is from my first hand experience playing WoW, not from some benchmarks.