Possible build - Advice ?

[Monkofdoom]

Hello all,

This evening I have spent several hours going over the idea of building a new single box for multiboxing. I have a perfectly fine 5 box system at the moment but I think I would like to get a second on one machine.

The details I have come up with are as follows:

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RAM: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/091124
2 * Kingston 2GB KIT (2X1GB) DDR2 667MHz/PC2-5300 CL5 Non Ecc 1.8V

CPU: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/131950
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping (2.4GHz 1066MHz) Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache (2x4MB (4MB per core pair) Retail Boxed Processor

Harddrive: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130454
Samsung SpinPoint HD501LJ 500GB SATAII Hard Drive 16MB Cache - OEM

Graphics Cards: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/126974
Inno3D 8600GT 256MB 128bit DDR3 DVI PCI-E Graphics Card

Motherboard: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/125082
Asus P5N-E SLI 650i Socket 775 PCI-E Onboard Audio ATX Motherboard

Case: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/115479
Casecom Black Mid Tower Case - Front Blue LED 120mm Fan - With Side Window

PSU: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/127861
OCZ StealthXStream 600W PSU - SLI Ready ATX2.2 12cm LED Fan

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I've gone with 2 (slightly lesser) graphics cards as I want to run 4 monitors off the computer rather than 2. Of course I am trying to make a fairly cheap build but wonder how well this would cope with 5 characters at once? (expected FPS?)

Any oppinions would be great and thanks for your time :)

- Monk

[Xzin]

All else equal, right now anyway, 5 separate computers are better in nearly all respects to 5 on 1. This is not to say a 5 in 1 isn't playable, but loading times are lower, fps will certainly not be 60 fps on all, etc.

So why downgrade?

[Skuggomann]

Id put Chuk Norris in there.





(sorry just had to say it XD)

[beyond-tec]

Harddrive: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130454
Samsung SpinPoint HD501LJ 500GB SATAII Hard Drive 16MB Cache - OEM

Any oppinions would be great and thanks for your time :)

- Monk

I wouldn't prefer Samsung Harddisks.

I've had three of them and all crashed after one year.

Currently I'm using Seagate Server Harddisks.
They're a little louder than the common harddisks but
faster and can handle a 24/7 runtime.

[Monkofdoom]

All else equal, right now anyway, 5 separate computers are better in nearly all respects to 5 on 1. This is not to say a 5 in 1 isn't playable, but loading times are lower, fps will certainly not be 60 fps on all, etc.

So why downgrade?

The 5 pc build I use is what I would call "hacked" and although playable for grinding / leveling several of the machines won't cope for PvP in the slightest - AV for example just causes to of them to hang and disconnect.

2 of them run at about 10 fps on average (sometimes less).

Basically I'm looking for something which will cope in that environment and a 1 pc build is preferable for now. Eventually I will look into 10 boxing in time for WOTLK and then all the machines will be back into action etc but for now I'd like a 1 machine solution.

[Wilbur]

That RAM is shit.

Go for the 6400 stuff http://www.ebuyer.com/product/98710

Faster and only a little more expensive.

Save some money, buy the OEM Processor, buy a decent heatsink/fan and rack up the overclock. The Q6600's are one of the best overclocking processors in the last few years, they can take a good deal of punishment and you can easily pull an extra 600Mhz Per core :-)

[Monkofdoom]

I may look into some different ram and overclocking I'm not to familiar with but will look into it a bit more.

Out of interest for this general level of build (I'm sure a few of you know what I mean) how effectively do you think it would run 5 accounts ?

[Wilbur]

Its a decent build although I'd question the viability of using 2 8600's. Depending on how you set it up.

How many characters are you planning on having per monitor? Will any monitors be used just for Internet, IRC, etc and NOT for gaming?

[Monkofdoom]

For when I'm doing serious things such as PvP then I will literally only have the 5 copies of wow running, normally I go into the pc process list and end everything which i don't need.

No browsers / irc / msn or anything and obviously everything in game would be set to the lowest settings.

Ideally I would have 1 char per monitor (with the 4th monitor having 2 chars).

Hence my wondering how well this setup would cope.

[Wilbur]

To be honest, 2 8600's would work fine, Although if you are looking for serious FPS, get the 8800GT and have that running your Main and one of the clones, then buy the 8600 for the other three, that'll work sweet as a nut :-)

[Monkofdoom]

To be honest, 2 8600's would work fine, Although if you are looking for serious FPS, get the 8800GT and have that running your Main and one of the clones, then buy the 8600 for the other three, that'll work sweet as a nut :-)

I did wonder about that I just have had problems before using 2 different types of graphics cards at once (although that was on XP) hence getting 2 of the same.

As far as FPS I'm used to playing around 20, so if I can get 5 copies running at 25 + then I'd be happy, I hope this machine could do that.

[Wilbur]

Having diffrent Graphics cards is only a problem if you wanted to use SLI.

With WoW using SLI is pointless.

[Vos]

if you are going to use Vista at some point, both graphics cards have to have the same driver. an 8600 and 8800 would be fine for that though....

[Monkofdoom]

Ahh ok, thanks for clearing that one up :)