Purposed Machines for Mult-Boxing...

[Shigan5]

Yeah i ran pretty much that exact system build there for a long time as my main box. The only differences were the case, which i had a cheaper one, the power supply, i was running a 480 not 585, and my processor was the 3800+ not the 4400. Other than that everything is the same, including the parts themselves. Same brands, manufacturers etc. It wasa very reliabale system and ran everything i threw at it. Oh and those FPS numbers I gave were when i was running Vista Ultimate at full settings as well so on XP you will get much better performance, but no DX10.

And as I said its got plenty of expandability, enough power for a 9600gt if you decide to upgrade, and extra slots for ram and you can add cooling and anything else you can think of. You can upgrade to dvd burners if you want and youve got an open ide slot to add another hard drive or two. The audio on the MB is phenomenal, no need for a fancy sound card. And with the hard drive being SATA you'll get much better load times when zoning. The only issue i had with the MB was when i upgraded the Video to my 9600gt, getting the 8600gt out of the board was extremely frustrating as the locking mechanism on the PCIe slot is very small and it sits under the end of the car, so it kills your fingers trying to press it down and do so without hurting your MB. But other than that no problems whatsoever. I hope this has helped.

[Sentack]

Hrm, and what about dirt cheep LCD monitors. I'm thinking that a 17" monitor for the secondary machines would be decent. I also really like ViewSonic monitors, but I'm not sure how cheep you can get an LCD Display these days. Any for around $150 bucks?

[Gallo]

Hrm, and what about dirt cheep LCD monitors. I'm thinking that a 17" monitor for the secondary machines would be decent. I also really like ViewSonic monitors, but I'm not sure how cheep you can get an LCD Display these days. Any for around $150 bucks?

If you're 5 boxing, even a 19" monitors is hard to read with 4 WoW's spread across it. Keep that in mind. I use a 19" as my "alt" monitor, and I have to squint to read text.

[Sentack]

Alright, I ordered the parts that Shigan5 recommended since it made for a rather cheep and reasonable computer. Once I get it up and running, I might see how that runs multiple WoW clients and then begin the research on what it might take to get 3-4 clients running on one machine as the slaves and see how my machine does for a Master machine. So I might go with 3 machines total. 2 Clients on the 2 slave machines and 1 master machine. Right now, my Master machine might be slower then the slaves because It's my current primary system that runs WoW fine even with a single processor. I figure 2 versions of the above hardware would result in a perfectly suitable 5 man machine setup. Right now I"m pondering 4 Mages and 1 Priest.

But, Warhammer Online, my target platform, is coming soon, Word is the Pre-Order and Collectors Edition information just got leaked. Now I have to start considering if I want to throw down the $70 bucks a box for THAT in the near future. Hrm. I need to see if it'll support multi-boxing like Blizzard has for WoW.

[Shigan5]

When i was running aforementioned machine i was able to run 2 clients at a time and get nice framerates, depending on resolution, if you ran two, half screen each depending on resolution you should get awesome framerates, just remember the higher the resolution the more hardware it needs. I was running at 1680x1050 and i was running 2 wows, one had a very large resolution the other had a tiny, the very large one had about 25 fps while the smaller had about 35. The larger one took up 2/3 of the screen while the smaller took up half of that last 1/3. so if you go with a smaller resolution, say 1024x768 and make each half screen you should have no problems breaking 40fps on both instances of wow.

EDIT: I was running at lowest graphic settings for both windows and I was also running vista, so running on xp you should get better framerates and be able to run with a little better graphic settings and keep good framerates. Along with a smaller resolution, of course.

[Shigan5]

Sorry for the double post but I just wanted to put one more thing forward, IDK if you already know but that harddrive and the cdrom drive are both SATA so dont put them in a raid config. Be some very awkward problems there, nothing major just it will make the system not boot and yea, cause a potential head scratcher for a while.

[Sentack]

Sorry for the double post but I just wanted to put one more thing forward, IDK if you already know but that harddrive and the cdrom drive are both SATA so dont put them in a raid config. Be some very awkward problems there, nothing major just it will make the system not boot and yea, cause a potential head scratcher for a while.

Yah, actually that might be a problem. I'm not used to working with SATA drives, my last system had a SATA drive and so I know enough that i have to make an driver disk for my copy of Windows XP I'll be using. I"m pretty sure in the past I've used Raid Configuration. So now I'll have to use... what? What's the other mode?

[Shigan5]

Just dont set one. You can opt to set for a raid config, but if you just plug them in and dont set anything in the bios you should be fine, theyll be detected as plunplay devices by your MoBo and thats it.

[Yanamana]

A good name brand ~ 250 is all you need.

uhm

NO!

I suppose if you like random reboots and hardware failure sure, 250 watts is good enuff. To bad no "good name brands" make 250 watt power supplies.

[Sentack]

I suppose if you like random reboots and hardware failure sure, 250 watts is good enuff. To bad no "good name brands" make 250 watt power supplies.

Okay, do they not make 250 Watt power supplies because even the most minimalist PC needs more then that, or because they feel their's no profit margion for PSU's that 'small'? Do PSU's that small have problems with stability? Do modern PC's draw more power then that naturally? What is it? Why is it you need more then 250Watts? Tell me more then just "I say so".