building a rig for less than 2000$(for 5-box)

OLD FIRST POST

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ok my old thread got overfloated and out of focus.

i have now set a price limit for the rig it self + xkeys pro or similar hardware, which is 2k$ the rig is needed for 5boxing wow
i have no knowlegde of computer hardware what-so-ever
but im thinking some cheap 8 Gb (2 x 2 x 2gb) OCZ ram
and an intel quad-core(maybe extreme) 2,(something) processer

i have to go now but will be back to edit this thread in a few hours...

Thanks in advance
Malthe MM

P.S. pm me about Hello Kitty themed PC - towers or cases

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Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM
Video Cards: EVGA 320-P2-N811-AR GeForce 8800GTS 320MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail x 2
Power Supply: OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W Power Supply - Retail
RAM: G.SKILL 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ - Retail x 2
Motherboard: EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor Model BX80562Q6600 - Retail


Final Price: $1,125.92

This leaves plenty of money for any other upgrades you may want, and i didnt select a case so you can try and find yourself a hello kitty one :p

Theres room to add a second hard drive (or more) and plenty of room for upgrades. This will have no problem 5 boxing and is a good setup with high quality parts. Its not an intel extreme but if you had wanted that you wudve been over budget. So this leaves you money for xkeys and anything else :D

Throw in a CoolerMaster case and Zalman 9500 cooling fan and you've got almost exactly the same system I just built, with brand-name changes on a few components. Damn thing is a beast at multitasking.

yeah i left it all out intentionally as the OP seemed like they were looking for a hello kitty, but there are plenty of options.

Here's a question: Does this $2000 budget include purchasing 2 monitors (or 1 really big one)?

hmm very good question ><

Hanns·G HW-191DPB Black 19" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor - Retail x 2

Total: $339.98

For two widescreen 19s shud be perfect for 5 boxing

its only for the computer and xkeys not monitors, keyboard, mouse (and speakers)

If you don't have to buy monitors, then you will be WELL below $2000. If you really want to spend all of your $2000, you can get the best of the best video cards (9xxx series geforce) and maybe even set up 5 separate fast hard drives for your WoW installs (Maxtor Raptors).

If you don't want to spend it all... the previous suggested list of components will be more than sufficient.

i once saw this Dell UltraSharp 20.1" 1680 x 1050 but its like its no longer made(had rating 5 of 5 on dell.com so i dont understand)

which one of these video cards?


and please Gallo give me a link to a Maxtor Raptor as i cant find one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130343 thats the beefed up 9-series. If not that, just get a 8800GT.



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136033 Western Digital (not Maxtor, sorry) Raptor. They're small, but super fast. To be used for applications, not for data storage really.

Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 10,000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive x5
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor x1
EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard x1
OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory x2
OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W Power Supply 100 - 240 V x1

1444,90$
still need a cooler/fan + case + sound card + xkeys pro(expensive) and a Nostromo thingy

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Originally Posted by 'Gallo',index.php?page=Thread&postID=51795#post517 95

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as…N82E16814130343 thats the beefed up 9-series. If not that, just get a 8800GT.

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THAT WILL BLOW MY BUDGET 600$ !!! IS INSANE FOR A VIDEO CARD

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Originally Posted by MaltheMM',index.php?page=Thread&postID=51800#post5 1800][url='http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136033R

Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 10,000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive[/url] x5
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor x1
EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard x1
OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory x2
OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W Power Supply 100 - 240 V x1

1444,90$
still need a cooler/fan + case + sound card + xkeys pro(expensive) and a Nostromo thingy

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You still need a Video card there. I also suggest that you don't buy BOTH a Nostromo and Xkeys, until you get situated in 5boxing. Sound cards built in to the motherboard generally do ok, unless you want high fidelity sound or surround sound.

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Originally Posted by MaltheMM',index.php?page=Thread&postID=51800#post5 1800][url='http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136033R

Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 10,000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive[/url] x5
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor x1
EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard x1
OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory x2
OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W Power Supply 100 - 240 V x1

1444,90$
still need a cooler/fan + case + sound card + xkeys pro(expensive) and a Nostromo thingy

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Question - why the 5xhard drive? I thought the general consensus was that running 1 copy of wow per hard drive did not improve performance. Just curious.

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Originally Posted by 'DarkslayrX',index.php?page=Thread&postID=51806#po st51806

Question - why the 5xhard drive? I thought the general consensus was that running 1 copy of wow per hard drive did not improve performance. Just curious.

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i dont know ... some one just suggested using 5 HDs so i did ... maybe i should get a 6th for storage ? or cut it down to one 500gb 10k RPM?

*EDIT* dont think u can get HDs with more than 150gb if the RPM has to be 10k or greater so what about http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152052 for storage and this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822116010 for my 5x wow?

Greetings MaltheMM,

There are many ways to achieve your goal indeed so let me list some of my own options (sorry I can't link to Newegg as I buy from a FR retailer) that should be below USD 1500, Ergotron stand excluded:

- Case : ANTEC Nine Hundred for its impressive air-cooling capabilities (big & cheap mofo 8) )
- Alim : Seasonic S12-650 Energy + (650W)
- CPU : Intel Quad6600 (great O/C potential)
- MB : Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R rev 2.0 (great O/C potential)
Note: a dedicated link for overclocking Quad with that MB http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=234205
- CPU Cooler : Xigmatek HDT-S1283, deffo the best around today IF you don't feel like taking the MB out of your rig to install the often-mandatory structure beneath it (a pain with most high-end coolers today).
The Xigmatek will replace the basic Intel fan with minimal work : unplug Intel one and plug the Xigmatek in place.
Link to a site dedicated to testing CPU Coolers and just that : http://www.frostytech.com/top5heatsinks.cfm
- Main HD : WD Raptor 150Go (please use the junction.exe applet -mentioned on this forum and its wiki- to link all 5 clients Data directory to a single one : insane boost for loading times. Just beware of WoW patches as you'll need to cancel the junction.exe during that)
- Second HD : Samsung Spinpoint F1 SATA 750Go 32mo (impressive speed, nice for backup and recording Fraps movies, and/or play around with Data directories)
- GPU : Nvidia 8800GT or ATI Radeon 3870, both in 512mo (whatever flavor you prefer: nvidia or ati).
- RAM : G.Skill Extreme 2 PC6400 HK 1Go * 4 offers great O/C potential at very reasonnable price
- Monitors : Samsung or Asus 22" * 2 (adding an Ergotron LX Dual stand is lovely but add another 300 USD on Dell.com)
Picture example: Taipan 5-box on two LCD 22" wide
- Fuel : a case of Jack Daniel's if you play on a PvP server (Coke Zero will do just fine on a PvE one).
- Video : please post your MB videos on Vimeo (or you'll feel the wrath of our local baby Onyxia -aka Vyndree- on your shoulders).

Best regards,

I would be careful with the WD Raptors. I bought 5 of them 3 years ago, today, only 2 are still running. I ran them in RAID0 for games only. The 2 surviving were never in a RAID configuration.

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Originally Posted by 'Shigan5',index.php?page=Thread&postID=51732#post5 1732

hmm very good question ><

Hanns·G HW-191DPB Black 19" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor - Retail x 2

Total: $339.98

For two widescreen 19s shud be perfect for 5 boxing

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This might be a stupid question, but those monitors have 1400x900 max resolution. How does that work with WoW's game resolutions?

wow has a 1400x900 resolution but i want an UltraSharp 20.1" with 1680x1050 or higher resolution ...

Get a 512 MB Graphics Card. 320MB is not enough. Two 10K RPM drives should be enough.

Personally I suggest the following Hard Drive setup.

Whatever size you require for your OS - SATA2 7200 RPM. The key with your OS is the sustained data transfer rate. Which is why we go for a SATA2 Drive.

You then install WoW on some 10K RPM drives. I'd recommend 2x WoW installs per drive. With a seek time of 3.9 seconds, the Raptors are easily the best. SATA 1 though, so not advisable for file storage due to the slower data transfer rate.

Storage drive - SATA2 500GB or larger.

Ok My tuppence...

I 5 box on one PC, on one monitor. It works and PiP is great but it would probably be better on 2... bear in mind aspect ratios if using keyclone and PiP. Widescreen is 1.6 so you would have to replicate that aspect ratio on your clone windows in the second monitor... if both are the same size, no probs the clones are just 1/4 the size.

Hard Drives
There si absolutely no point going th emultiu drive route with WoW... 1 HD will give better performance as the disk reads are cached at the disk and probably L2 which will blow the benefits of parrallel drive access. 1x access from disk and 4x access from cache is a lot faster than 5x access from disk.
NOTE: this does rely on using multiple parse points see junction or mlink [Other] PowerShell script to create symbolically linked (mklink) copies of WoW

The biggest bottle neck on my system (athlon x2 4600+ 2.8Gb RAM Radeon X1950Xt) is the CPU bore cores run flat out when running 5 instances, I am not approaching the memory limit and my gfx card seems fine. Therefore I would definitely advise getting the best CPU / Mobo you can.

Why 8Gb? This seems to be a bit unnecessary as 4Gb is more than sufficient to run 5x WoW, a video running in another monitor, half a dozen tabs open in forefox and an excel sheet open.

Actually, junctioning 2 Installs per HDD will give you better performance than accessing everything from the 1HDD.

i know it might give best performance to have to copies per drive but im only planning to have 2 copies of wow(even though im planning to run 5) , yes i know that is bad for the performance aswell but i see no need to make all my macros x4(i know i could just copy the macro-file but thats not me ... )

the ram is because and i quote "ME NEEDS IT ! , ME WANTS IT !... MY PRECIOUS !!!"


BTW updated the first post

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Originally Posted by 'Wilbur',index.php?page=Thread&postID=52456#post52 456

Actually, junctioning 2 Installs per HDD will give you better performance than accessing everything from the 1HDD.

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Why do you say that? Surely each subsequent request for the same piece of data will be provided from cache, when zoning etc this means that data should only be retrieved from the platters for the first request, everything else should be from cache, either the disk's, controller's (if it exists) or the processor's.

This was the same theory we applied when everything was run from 1 Install. In practice it didnt work out as well. HDD Cache isn't big enough given the minor diffrences in data queueing. Whilst in theory it is sound, the minor diffrences in timing requests means its not as effective.

this video cards supports4(FOUR) monitors