World of Warcraft & CS: Source

[Astro33]

Hi all,
I am wondering if the Anandtech September mid-range system guide is good enough for those WOW and CSS. The budge is below 1300. Mainly a system that is powerful enough to play "just" those two games comfortably yet as cheap as possible hehe.
Oh yah, don't want CRTs, want a good LCD monitor for the fast actions is CSS....or is any "brand" monitor with 8ms refresh rates good?

BTW, since I am not in the US so maybe some of the brands are not available here. The core chipset names would be more helpful than product names.
Any recommendations for a cheap guy, gurus?

CPU?
MB w/onboard sound
RAM
video card
PSU should be how many watts?
LCD monitor
should be enuff...rest I'll just go plain vanilla~

 

[suicidalpigeon]

overclocking? monitor,keyboard,blah? need an os? are the jets going all the way? a system based off of those two games will be pretty cheap.

 

[suicidalpigeon]

heres a start.

epox 9npa
3000+
evga/bfg 6600gt, or x800xl for a little more juice
1gb 1x1024 corsair value
fortron 450w/pcp&c silencer 360w
seagate 7200.8 250gig
benq dw1640

 

[Astro33]

Thanks yo.

Just the hardware man. Not going flying with overclocking or other stuff. Oh yah, need some recommendations on a good gaming LCD...or is anything at 8ms good?

 

[coomar]

Originally posted by: wafflesandsyrup
heres a start.

epox 9npa
3000+
evga/bfg 6600gt, or x800xl for a little more juice
1gb 1x1024 corsair value
fortron 450w/pcp&c silencer 360w
seagate 7200.8 250gig
benq dw1640

still spend the 1300, just get a large ass monitor like a dell 20 inch, widescreen looks great on wow

 

[MercenaryForHire]

The AMD gaming system will be more than enough - as mentioned, get the bigger display.

- M4H

 

[suicidalpigeon]

but of course, spend only what you need to get the job done. everything just spoil the #%@$^%& out of it, sound, monitor, you name it. oh and if you dont like onboard, a chaintech av710 would be a good budget card, next would be audidgy 2zs, high end for me will be the bluegears x-mystique. x-fi is too expensive for me when i can only hear so much differentials.

 

[Markbnj]

Well, WoW doesn't push the limits at all really. They use a lot of shaders and atmospherics, but purposefully avoided pushing an extreme number of polygons. I was playing it in 1600 x 1200 everything cranked up on my old 2.5 ghz Pentium, which was a dog due to the slow bus and drive.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

I would suggest getting a 2x1gb kit of RAM though for WoW as most MMORPG's are RAM hogs. Just a suggestion, it doesn't need to be uber low latency RAM or anything.

 

[Lyfer]

EVGA SLI Motherboard (comes free with the video card)
Athlon 64 3200 OEM (CPU and Fan are from ewiz, saves $50) $135
Coolermaster Heatsink with 80MM FAN $10
1gb Corsair Valueselect DDR400 $90
EVGA Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR $400
Maxtor 200GB SATA 16mb cache $86
Nec black or BenQ DVD-RW $42
Nec black floppy $8
Chenming midtower case $35
Fortron AX450 450W PSU w/12CM fan (has dual 18A 12v+ rails) $50
microsoft black keyboard/mice combo $30

Rig total = $976 (final shipping price to CA, $936 if you count the Evga $40 MIR)

That leaves you with over $300 on monitor/LCD.

BTW WoW requirements to run at 800x600 are very light, a TI4200/Radeon 9200 and 2ghz cpu with 512mb ram will get you buy fine. CS:S is different story, the above rig will run anything you throw at it, if you want to make it kick arse, throw in a thermalright SP90 for $30 from svc and you got one KIlLER OC'in machine. (maybe step up the ram to some Patriot TCCD too)