Building a new box for 5 mans!

[MiRai]

So I have read through alot of the threads here about hardware but no one seems to be able to lock down the minimum to run 5 WoW accounts on low settings. I am sure people know but not sure if its ever been documented maybe?

The problem with this is how do you define "low" settings? Are you referring to the lowest possible settings in game, or something that falls somewhere near low-ish? No matter your answer, we can ask another person the same question, and their answer is likely going to vary, and that's because there are literally tens of thousands of combinations of video settings (if not way more than that) which you can choose from.

I have been looking at the "Logical Increments" site and thinking of the "Good" build as a minimum. Thoughts?

That site is built around giving advice on people playing solo, not multiboxing. So, if you don't choose a higher-end build from the site, you could easily be disappointed in the results when you're trying to run five game clients on a machine which was recommended for one game client.

Please keep Legion in mind if there are hardware requirement changes/challenges expected there.

The minimum system requirements for the game have gone up every single expansion, and Legion is no different.

I haven't seen Logical Increments before, but it's a nice little reference. Though, it points out one problem I have with similar listing sites, it's all using the price from Amazon. Because affiliate links.

Which means, you're not getting the best deals on your parts, but the guy who's getting click revenue probably is.

Everyone should be encouraged to shop around, but I personally prefer bundling as many items as I can from a single retailer, even if it means I'm paying just a little bit more, because it usually minimizes any potential headache of dealing with multiple sites if returns need to be made. So, while I use PCPartPicker a lot to piece things together and give general estimates, I always take its quoted price with a grain of salt because I'm assuming that it's going to be a bit more since I do have my preferred sites which I buy from.

Also, people who are buying online should take into account which sites charge them tax, and which do not, because this could easily save you hundreds of dollars if the hardware you're looking to buy is expensive.

I was really hesitant to post on this, because we don't really have a budget here, just a minimum for boxing question. And pinning that down is almost impossible without more information. Like the size of the monitor you'll be using, what graphical settings you're hoping to use, addons, etc. All those things can contribute in a big way to making the whole thing work/not work.

I agree, because everyone defines "playable" or "tolerable" or "low" as something different.

1280 x 720 (x5) @ 60/20 FPS @ Good
1440 x 900 (x5) @ 45/30 FPS @ Fair
1920 x 1080 (x5) @ 30/15 FPS @ Fair
2560 x 1440 (x5) @ 60/60 FPS @ Low

Everyone would define each of these examples differently, and we're barely taking video settings into account outside of some general presets.

Also, I'd recomend scouting Newegg and other sites daily for those daily deals/flash deals. You can pick up some good stuff cheap. I grabbed 2 sticks of ram free with my SSDs that way. Saved me a good chunk of cash.

Slick Deals is a nice site to find deals on, and Amazon Prime Day is next week too.

As far as monitor goes, I would recommend something like this

Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 480 8GB Video Card ($249.00)
Other: X-STAR DP2710 LED 2560x1440 Samsung PLS 27" Monitor "Glossy" ($189.90)

I'm not entirely confident that an RX 480 will be able to drive five game clients at 2560x1440. If OP was to resize their game clients down to 1920x1080 then I'd say it's do-able, but then they should probably just go with a 1080 display to begin with.

Additionally, there's plenty of room to upgrade later, grab a second 480 for example

A second AMD GPU would not be useful for CrossFire, as CrossFire does not work in windowed mode. It would be useful for splitting the load of the game clients across multiple displays, but that's not normally a route I'd tell people to plan ahead for. SLI works in windowed mode, but then people have to pay a premium for nVidia GPUs.

Anyway, OP it's difficult to operate without a budget because not only are everyone's expectations different when it comes to a playable or tolerable multiboxing experience, but the expansion is literally weeks away from releasing and requirements to multibox are most likely going to increase (as they always do).

It's very difficult to create a "budget" build when people wait years to upgrade their machine because they're stuck having to buy all new hardware since almost nothing can be carried over to the new build, and this all becomes very expensive. If you decide to go with a build that can only handle the lowest possible settings right now, then what happens next expansion? You now have to upgrade the motherboard, CPU, and GPU again, all of which are the most expensive components.

It might help if you could tell us what you consider to be a playable experience, but my guess is that if you're willing to drop your resolution down to 1280x720 or 1440x900 right now, that that would increase your performance by a lot (but now your windows are a bit smaller). You can also, assuming you're using ISBoxer, disable Instant Swapping in your Window Layout. Adjusting this setting will remove your ability to utilize the 1:1 mouse broadcasting feature of ISBoxer, but you can sort of work around that by adjusting some settings in your Repeater Profile. However, disabling Instant Swapping might also mess with your characters' interfaces depending on the resolutions you've chosen to run.