3 Boxing Hardware Evaluation & a Starter Questions.

[Whur]

I would like to touch on a point that might have been overlooked.

He mentions that he will be using a laptop computer instead of a desktop. Whilst his system specifications are certainly powerful enough to run 3 clients, the real issue he is going to run into will be heat dissipation from his laptop.

The main problem is that with your HDD, GPU and CPU being pushed to their limits, I fear that your computer will overheat very quickly and run the risk of frying your GPU.

I would suggest you google your make of graphics card and find it's maximum temperature and the rule of thumb is (max temp - 30) = safe running temp for GPU

Secondly, make sure that when you play you either manually set your fans to overclocking or have a large amount of ventilation in your space, possibly with a portable fan blowing across your exhaust.

This will be the main problem I foresee with using a laptop computer

Thank you for bringing it to my attention Jeremiah. I actually ran out and bought one of these at a local computer shop for about $20.00 US, Cool Master NotePal (if for some reason the image doesn't show, just a laptop mini desk that elevates the laptops back and has two cheap fans beneath it.)



This sort of brings me to another question. I have a Mac Mini (2010) at home (that I can take with me), which is at the moment not being used a lot as I am not at home. I am wondering if anyone would have experience with these and WoW? I would run Win7 or WinXP on it, and is possible 3 clients to take the burden of the laptop, and 2 clients on the laptop, as I just decided this is way to cool and want to run 5 clients, 5 boxing that is!

Any advice on this would be great, again I am terrible with hardware and graphics cards and CPUs.

Thanks,
Whur

[EDIT]: I forgot to mention I did many searches on mac minis, not many people favor them apparently because they have a crappy hardware history, but some people apparently like the 2010 Mac Mini and WoW, however these were not multiple client tests.

The hardware specs on the newer ones are these, copy pasting:

NVIDIA GeForce 320M using 256 MiB of DDR3 SDRAM
4 GiB (2×2 GiB) 1066 MHz
2.66 GHz (P8800) Intel Core 2 Duo
2 × 500 GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA

[Whur]

This might also be a very stupid question, but when I run 3 clients with Inner Space, I get the windows 7 bar at the bottom overlapping? And if I do auto-minimize it pops up if I go near the bottom?

[MiRai]

This might also be a very stupid question, but when I run 3 clients with Inner Space, I get the windows 7 bar at the bottom overlapping? And if I do auto-minimize it pops up if I go near the bottom?

Either stay away from the bottom or manually adjust your Window Layout to account for the task bar. I want to say the task bar
is 30 pixels... or something like that?

[Khatovar]

30 with small icons, 40 with regular icon {rightclick taskbar > Taskbar > Use Small Icons}

[Whur]

Thanks Fenril & Khatovar!

[Jeremiah]

I am off a mac and am quite capable of running 3 clients in native OS X. I can't comment on the running in bootcamp/parellels software for WoW.

In terms of mac mini, your main drawback will be your graphics card. As the 320m was designed as a mobile graphics solution for laptops and mini desktops, I don't think you'd enjoy the game quality from running 3 clients off the mac mini.

So, if you were to run 3 clients off of the mac mini and 2 off the laptop, I'd set it up like this.

Have your main client (master) running on your laptop and reduce all your settings down to low (recommended)

On the mac mini, set all the video settings to low and then go to advanced and limit your maximum FPS to 10 or so. That is quite important as the graphics card will be pulling power from your RAM and thus your load times in cities like dalaran etc will have an inverse load speed relation to the settings of your graphics.

I know that a lot of programs exist that can run cross system and even cross OS but I'm unsure about IS boxer. Those who use it might be able to shed light on that.

P.S-You had a mac and then you went back? Tut tut :P

[Whur]

I am off a mac and am quite capable of running 3 clients in native OS X. I can't comment on the running in bootcamp/parellels software for WoW.

In terms of mac mini, your main drawback will be your graphics card. As the 320m was designed as a mobile graphics solution for laptops and mini desktops, I don't think you'd enjoy the game quality from running 3 clients off the mac mini.

So, if you were to run 3 clients off of the mac mini and 2 off the laptop, I'd set it up like this.

Have your main client (master) running on your laptop and reduce all your settings down to low (recommended)

On the mac mini, set all the video settings to low and then go to advanced and limit your maximum FPS to 10 or so. That is quite important as the graphics card will be pulling power from your RAM and thus your load times in cities like dalaran etc will have an inverse load speed relation to the settings of your graphics.

I know that a lot of programs exist that can run cross system and even cross OS but I'm unsure about IS boxer. Those who use it might be able to shed light on that.

P.S-You had a mac and then you went back? Tut tut :P

Hi Jeremiah,

Really appreciate the 'how-to', I will try it this weekend to transfer 2-3 accounts to the mac mini to unburden the laptop.

I am definitely running Windows in bootcamp on the mac mini. No parallels or vmware for me.

To answer your question, I would never go back, I am temporarily visiting this world called Windows.