Noobie Looking for a little hardware advice/help

[Suspiria]

Hello all

Over the last week or so I have read all the wiki posts and almost every relevant post on the forums, so I believe I am almost ready to plunge into 5-boxing.

I am sure I will have loads of questions over the coming weeks, however to start I have a few big hardware questions.

I know pretty much nothing about hardware and the rig I am looking at to support my 5-boxing is really pricey so I want to confirm with those of you in the know before I purchase it that it is good enough to 5-box.

These are the specs:

HP Firebird 802 Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz
Processor Type Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400
Processor Speed 2.66GHz
RAM 4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 SDRAM
Hard Drive Speed/Capacity 500GB SATA 5400RPM
Graphics Dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800S
Pre-loaded Operating System Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit w/ SP1

So, here are my general questions before I spend waaaay too much money on all this:

1) Off the shelf, is this computer powerful enough to 5-box without headaches?
2) I've read here on the forums that 8GB RAM is almost necessary. Is this true or is 4GB OK? If 8 is necessary I'm sure I can get it upgraded at the store as an option.
3) Should I have an extra hard drive installed as well so I can keep the wow installs separate from the OS?
4) What do I need to ensure I can have 2 monitors connected to the same computer? Is the fact that the specs say "Dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800s" good enough for this?
5) Is there anything I haven't thought of that I should before I drop a bunch of cash on this?

Incase my goals have any baring on any of these questions:

-I have an 80 Paladin now as my main with very good tanking equipment, so my plan is to make 4 Shamans, link them to each other via RAF and boost them all up with my pallie.
-With a brief stop at 70 to run all the BC heroics to get my macros and style down, my goal is primarily PVE.
-I still have a ton of research to do in deciding whether or not to buy an xkeys setup or just keyclone all my shammy stuff to pallie tanking stuff, etc.

Sorry if any of these questions are really basic, I'm just a little lost when it comes to hardware and I want to make sure I'm getting the right stuff. The salesmen at the store really aren't much help.

Thank you all in advance!

[keyclone]

howdy Suspiria and welcome to the forums!

although i'm not the quintessential hardware guru, i might be able to lend some thoughts..

your rig looks good. if you are looking to cut some expenses, you could go with a single graphics board (nvidia 280?), so long as it has 1g of memory (which is more then enough).

4gb of system memory is good... but 8g is always better. :D these days, i've been seeing more DDR3 setups which come in tri-channel setups, giving you 3, 6, 9, or 12g options. (i believe the DDR3 performs better, but i'm sure someone else will chime in on that)

i don't like the harddrive, as it's a 5400 rpm drive. you really want to get faster rpm.. 10,000 rpm is available, but costs more. the most common would be the 7200 rpm SATA drives. one thing that helps A LOT is the size of the cache on the drive. get the biggest possible (ie: 32 or 64m cache)

there is another option for drives these days... solid state (SSD). they are supposed to be faster then normal drives... i say supposed to be as the early ones seem to have some problems with their SATA drivers. from what i have heard, the one to get is still the intel SSD X25-E (prices start around $400 for 32G). don't get caught up on the storage size... speed is all that matters. for large storge, just get an eSATA external drive w/ 1TB and you'd be set (it's also more portable... which is better)

you don't mention the mainboard. that can be key to getting solid throughput between the cpu and graphics boards as well as improved memory speeds

what about your video setup? planning on one screen or two? if you are going to 5-box, i'd recommend 2 screens and put a 2x2 grid on the 2nd screen (or keep it for your web/winamp/vent/im area)

i hope that helps... you're by no means alone, as almost all of us have gone through the hardware wrestling match. i'm sure the real hardware guys/gals will chime in after me (have you checked the hardware forum?)

if you have any questions, or if you just want to chat it up, feel free to drop me a note any time.

good luck and welcome to the addiction,

Rob (keyclone developer)

[BigSmitty]

While it's not "overkill" for 5 boxing WoW, the price is, at least the ones I Googled up after looking at the HP spec sheet. I'm a very staunch supporter of building your own (or having someone do it) as opposed to most manufactured systems.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883227084

This product is about half of what the HP system costs, and while I don't see the HD specs, it runs very similar to the stuff I'm using. I'm sure you could actually find a cheaper system if you looked a bit closer.

I agree with Rob on the speed of the hard drive, and if I read the spec sheet right, it's a pair of 250GB drives that are "hot swappable". Get at a bare minimum a 7200RPM drive or a 10000RPM drive. You can save some money by ditching the dual SLI cards in favor of a single card with dual outputs, the GTX280 or GTX295 are good cards. I run 5 clients with keyclone to two monitors and I don't lag, my main runs at full graphics settings at 45 FPS / 30 background FPS, clones mid-graphics at 36 FPS / 20 background FPS.

Processor: AMD Phenom X4 Quad Core at 2.5GHz (stock, no overclocking as of yet) Got it on the 13th (last Friday) for $166 at my MicroCenter store

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 (year or so old, used to be the home for my AMD 5000+ BE processor, since it would take the Phenom I kept it). Probably eBay the board for under $100 now...

Graphics: EVGA GeForce 8800 Ultra (originally purchased in order to run Age of Conan at full graphics). Runs WoW with all the bells and whistles (edge glow, etc) and never slows down. Couldn't find one on newegg.com but the 9800GTX's are running around $150 for a card, which is less than what I paid for my 8800 a little less than a year ago.

Hard Drive: Western Digital 7200RPM SATA drive, 150GB. Probably the next thing to upgrade here. Data transfer rates are fine, but I really think a 10K RPM drive with a decent cache would do just fine. It's the worst item on my Vista Experience score at 5.7.

RAM: 4GB of Crucial or OCZ... Can't remember which, DDR3-1066 speed with blue heat spreaders. Never gets over 50% load even with 4 Chain Lightnings and a Death and Decay all being dropped at the same time. Oh, and iTunes and a web browser open in the background.

Monitors: Sceptre 26" for the 4 clones (4 800x600) client windows, still has room for the icons and "Start" logo on the left side, Sony 20" for the main toon. I sometimes will switch the 26" display to a single 1280x1024 and three small PiP windows to the right of that. You can see some of the setups in the "Screenshots" section of the forums..."Mah Droods" is the title.

I think that's about it. I've been building my own systems since 1997, and I'll never get a "pre-packaged" system again. Too much overhead built in, and a lot of crap that you may or may not ever use. It also depends on your location, as some places may only have access to a larger chain that limits the possibilities from a BYOPC standpoint, but take a look at some of the mom and pop type stores if they are around. Even my dad's hometown with less than 2000 people in it had a store where they would build exactly to your specs.

Hope this helps.