So a friend of mine..

[Ualaa]

I've got 8GB, and 5-box with a lot of addons.
I usually have 12-15 tabs open on Firefox.
I have the IS Boxer Toolkit open, iTunes running, U Torrent, X-Split for streaming...

I have plenty of Ram, and rarely use more than 6 GB of it.



If you're upgrading, I'd lean towards an i7 2600K based system.

[Peli]

I've got 8GB, and 5-box with a lot of addons.
I usually have 12-15 tabs open on Firefox.
I have the IS Boxer Toolkit open, iTunes running, U Torrent, X-Split for streaming...

I have plenty of Ram, and rarely use more than 6 GB of it.



If you're upgrading, I'd lean towards an i7 2600K based system.

Are you guys running Windows 7 64-bit? System utilities alone sucks up 2 GB of RAM for me (on a brand new install) and then if you figure 1GB per instance of WoW, that leaves you with only ~1 GB for Chrome, Streaming, etc. With my recent upgrade, I put in 16GB of RAM and I no longer have any issues. I'd just hate for him to spend that kind of money and be bottlenecked by something as silly and as cheap to fix as RAM.

For comparison, I just overhauled my rig with these components for ~$600 US.
-i5 2500K w/ Thermalright cooler
-Asus P8Z68-V LE Mobo
-16 GB DDR3-1333 RAM
-560ti 2GB

That leaves you with a lot of cash left over to buy a case, optical drive, PSU, SSD, and HDD.

[Ualaa]

Are you guys running Windows 7 64-bit? System utilities alone sucks up 2 GB of RAM for me (on a brand new install) and then if you figure 1GB per instance of WoW, that leaves you with only ~1 GB for Chrome, Streaming, etc. With my recent upgrade, I put in 16GB of RAM and I no longer have any issues. I'd just hate for him to spend that kind of money and be bottlenecked by something as silly and as cheap to fix as RAM.

Yes, I'm using 64-bit Windows 7, Home Premium.

If you want more than 8GB of ram, go for it.
It is fairly cheap...

I don't think anyone needs more than 8GB for 5-boxing Warcraft.