10 * 3440x1440 - hardware suggestions

[WOWBOX40]

As i said..setting up multiple computers isnt easy...and you wont be able to press a switch to bring up a certain toons gamewindow up on your main monitor (if its running on a completely different pc), "just like that". This is a major downside. So you most likly have to adjust monitor and maybe also keyboard and mouse on the fly, if need be, like if you are doing raids where you have to custom move a spesific character. You will also find the "FTL" system a challenge to setup.. Not to mention it only works up to max 24 characters. This is the reason i decided to ditch that system altogether and created a good old custom system with buttons to assign /focus nameoftoon, /follow focus and /assist focus macros.

Sidenote:
There are extremly few desks that are big enough to have 6++ monitors, keyboards etc on. Your best bet is to buy 2 sturdy items with lots of shelfs or drawers in them, then add a custum thick woodplate you can lay on top of them, acting as the main deskspace. It should ideally be able to carry 150 kg+.

There could also be the added problem that you run out of poweroutlets and that the fuses you have start to blow, due to all the computers and added items. So you might need a visit from an electrician to hook up more cables etc. And if you have a oldschool internet connection you might need to upgrade it to fiber...or get another dsl line. Check the current fuse on the powerline and figure out in advance how much watts you are able to use. Lots to spend money on.. hehe

[MadMilitia]

As i said..setting up multiple computers isnt easy...and you wont be able to press a switch to bring up a certain toons gamewindow up on your main monitor (if its running on a completely different pc), "just like that". This is a major downside. So you most likly have to adjust monitor and maybe also keyboard and mouse on the fly, if need be, like if you are doing raids where you have to custom move a spesific character. You will also find the "FTL" system a challenge to setup.. Not to mention it only works up to max 24 characters. This is the reason i decided to ditch that system altogether and created a good old custom system with buttons to assign /focus nameoftoon, /follow focus and /assist focus macros.

Sidenote:
There are extremly few desks that are big enough to have 6++ monitors, keyboards etc on. Your best bet is to buy 2 sturdy items with lots of shelfs or drawers in them, then add a custum thick woodplate you can lay on top of them, acting as the main deskspace. It should ideally be able to carry 150 kg+.

There could also be the added problem that you run out of poweroutlets and that the fuses you have start to blow, due to all the computers and added items. So you might need a visit from an electrician to hook up more cables etc. And if you have a oldschool internet connection you might need to upgrade it to fiber...or get another dsl line. Check the current fuse on the powerline and figure out in advance how much watts you are able to use. Lots to spend money on.. hehe

Yeah I think someone here told me about this years ago. That's what puts me off about running multiple PCs. If I can get them running fine on one then I'll do that.

As far as desk space: I have an uplift 72x30x48 L-shaped desk. So real estate isn't an issue.

[WOWBOX40]

Most of the desks you can buy support a lot less rhan you might think. If you study their instructions closely usually they max support 40 kg or so at the back...right where you ideally want the monitorstand. It can take maybe 80 kg at the very center...but thats just marketing bs, thats useless if you plan to use it as a computerdesk. If you dont have any choice but to use the desk, you can buy or get custom made height adjustable bars, which you can place at the very back, under the monitorstand, to prevent them from crashing down on the floor. Also, it might take the amount of kilo you need, but rarely does the liftmotor accept the same amount. So usually you can wave goodbye to the "lift" feature.

[MadMilitia]

Most of the desks you can buy support a lot less rhan you might think. If you study their instructions closely usually they max support 40 kg or so at the back...right where you ideally want the monitorstand. It can take maybe 80 kg at the very center...but thats just marketing bs, thats useless if you plan to use it as a computerdesk. If you dont have any choice but to use the desk, you can buy or get custom made height adjustable bars, which you can place at the very back, under the monitorstand, to prevent them from crashing down on the floor. Also, it might take the amount of kilo you need, but rarely does the liftmotor accept the same amount. So usually you can wave goodbye to the "lift" feature.

I keep my towers on the floor because well, they are floor towers as labeled.

I have only two monitors on my 72x30. One 1440p widescreen and a small 1920x1080 for isboxer and some other things. I'm not really keen on expanding the monitor layout. Most likely I'm going with the beefier floor tower. So no extra weight on my desktop.

[CMKCot]

its not texture, geometry or effects that will kill you and the RAM and CPU usage are fine, its the frame buffer what gets you. your VGA has to pump out some ludicrous amounts of pixels. and VGAs were never designed with multiboxing as a reasonable use case.

i have a similar client setup (21:9 1440p) and 5x wows make my 1080 OCd pump about 25millon pixels a frame, 10 would be about 50m... those numbers are just unreasonable, and even a 1080ti will struggle to keep up. (4k is "only" 8m pixels) this pixel count wont magically appear on your screen, its rendered using the
VRAM as storage, my current 5 screens at 3440*1440 use up about 4gigvram as framebuffer with another 3 for assets.

It will be cheaper, and more reasonable when you think of future proofing your setup, to offload 5 of the clients to a second PC.

you could try lowering the render quality, but the impact I've seen is negligible.



when i upgraded to 1440p i noticed some REALLY poor performance, not consistent with my estimations... eventually i narrowed it down to turbo boost 3.0 being stupid, and to VideoFX. after correcting TB3.0 byt killing it at the BIOS, i changed my weakauras/vfx setup to use only one source per slave and went from 40isk fps tops up to a steady 60. maybe check that if your setup relies heavily on vfx.

[MadMilitia]

its not texture, geometry or effects that will kill you and the RAM and CPU usage are fine, its the frame buffer what gets you. your VGA has to pump out some ludicrous amounts of pixels. and VGAs were never designed with multiboxing as a reasonable use case.

i have a similar client setup (21:9 1440p) and 5x wows make my 1080 OCd pump about 25millon pixels a frame, 10 would be about 50m... those numbers are just unreasonable, and even a 1080ti will struggle to keep up. (4k is "only" 8m pixels) this pixel count wont magically appear on your screen, its rendered using the
VRAM as storage, my current 5 screens at 3440*1440 use up about 4gigvram as framebuffer with another 3 for assets.

It will be cheaper, and more reasonable when you think of future proofing your setup, to offload 5 of the clients to a second PC.

you could try lowering the render quality, but the impact I've seen is negligible.



when i upgraded to 1440p i noticed some REALLY poor performance, not consistent with my estimations... eventually i narrowed it down to turbo boost 3.0 being stupid, and to VideoFX. after correcting TB3.0 byt killing it at the BIOS, i changed my weakauras/vfx setup to use only one source per slave and went from 40isk fps tops up to a steady 60. maybe check that if your setup relies heavily on vfx.

Thanks for the advice. I just ordered a 1080TI (should be here tomorrow) for now to offset some of the load on my existing 1080. Going to see how that goes and then if I need more CPU I'll go for that.

The setup will be 3x3440x1440 (tank and healers on 1080ti for grid and click bars) 7x1920x1080 (DPS on 1080). Maybe for now that will be enough.

[WOWBOX40]

By the way.. if you fancy, a small workaround regarding not having the ability to hotswap a toon from the other pc on the monitor you play most on...is to have that spesific character on your main pc instead. Just something to keep in mind.

F.ex

Pc 1
Main toon
Toon 2
Toon 3
Toon 4
Toon 5
Toon 6 (the main from pc nr 2)
Toon 7 (the main from pc nr 3)

Pc nr 2
Toon 2
Toon 3
Toon 4
Toon 5

Pc nr 3
Toon 2
Toon 3
Toon 4
Toon 5


This way you can lead whenever you want from pc 1. You will need to have the extra resources to play 2 more accounts on your main pc though, in this random example.

[WOWBOX40]

Well... the "one pc setup to rule them all" dream of running the upcoming 32 core amd cpu, 128 gb+ of ram etc, and a 32 gb gfx card took a small dive... lets just say its cheaper to run multiple pcs.

Check out what this shop wants for the 32 gb gfx card

https://www.komplett.no/product/1018...hnical-details

(14k us dollars)

[Toned]

So what are we 10 boxing? I mess around with 10boxing every expansion for early raid trash farming BOEs and some boss fights.
The emerald nightmare first dragon with 10 pallies for example was access to easy gear to push mythic+.

[WOWBOX40]

Im farming 20 man mythic raids with 20 characters. The more toons you have the higher chance of boe loot. Its not easy, but having atleast 7+ healers spamming the main tank as you run around collecting mobs and kiting works

Im not farming now, just waiting for bfa raids to come out.

When im not farming raids, im doing stand still gold farming with more than 20 characters

(it is worth mentioning that i made a copy of my profile in isboxer, for when i want to farm with 20 characters: the characters from 21 and above (the ones that are doing the standstill farming), arent using the normal keybind then, instead, "all" of the keybinds from my main character, is re-keyed / re-mapped to a couple of macroes on the farming characters. This way im able to "maximaize" and do both things at the same time).