[WoW Classic]PC Upgrades for new 8-man team

[Boxen]

Yes, it's another "what hardware do I need" post. Thank you in advance for your patience.

I multiboxed 5 shaman in TBC on a Dell laptop. I think it's about time I tried again.

I'm looking to upgrade my PC with the goal of multiboxing eight mages in Classic WoW. Here's my current configuration:

CPU:              AMD Ryzen 5 2600
Cooler:           Corsair H115i PRO
Motherboard:      Asus ROG Crosshair VII Hero
Memory:           G.Skill Trident Z DDR4-3600 (2x8GB)
Boot Drive:       Samsung 970 Evo 500GB M.2-2280 NVME SSD
Game Drive:       Samsung 860 QVO 2TB 2.5" SSD
Junk Drive:       Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB 3.5" 5900RPM HD
Graphics Card:    See below
Case:             NZXT S340 Midi-ATX Tower
PSU:              Seasonic FOCUS Plus Gold 850W 80+ Gold
Operating System: Windows 10 Home 1909
Monitor:          Acer XB270HU 27" 2560x1440 144Hz

I currently have access to two graphics cards, neither of which I'm particularly happy with from a stability or power point of view. These are: MSI RX 570 ARMOR OC 8GB & Sapphire Radeon RX VEGA 64 8 GB NITRO+

It's generally a solid PC with a few teething troubles. The first is the graphics card(s) which, with a little TLC, might turn out to be viable options but, frankly, I've had my fill of AMD and want to return to NVIDIA. The second is the case which, I suspect, isn't doing an optimal job of getting the heat out (or, more specifically, getting the cool in).

Aside from those issues, I feel, that to support eight accounts with reasonable graphics settings (Setting 3 - Classic Mode - with 60fps on the main and 30fps on the slaves) I'll need to upgrade my processor and RAM.

The question is, what is required and where am I most lacking?

As far as RAM is concerned, I feel another 16GB would be a good upgrade, but should I add another two sticks of the RAM I have or replace what I have with a 2x16GB setup?

For the processor, I'm thinking of a 3900X might be the way to go. I do like the 3700X, particularly because it has a lower TDP, but I'm not sure it's a worthwhile upgrade over the 2600.

For the graphics card, I'm looking at a 2080 Super or a 2080Ti.

My questions are:

1. Are my proposed upgrades sound? Will they do the job?
2. Are they, perhaps, overkill? Can I get away with spending less?
3. Where will I get the most bang for my buck? Which upgrades should I prioritize of the others?
4. 4x8GB or 2x16GB?

My goals are to have a 100% stable platform from a hardware point of view. I can't be doing with resolving stability issues; that's just not fun for me.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[jak3676]

I'd say the minimums for WoW Classic are 1 CPU core per client and 1GB RAM per client. GPU is much more dependent on your display setup, resolution, and amount of eye candy you want to enable - but you generally want to focus on GPU VRAM more than GPU core counts.

WoW Classic really isn't as demanding as many people think - even running it at 4k with all settings maxed doesn't come close to the stess as many modern games. I've only run 6 clients max and generally 5, so I'm extrapolating my answers for 8 clients. I'm on an i9-9900k, 1080Ti, 16GB RAM @ 2400 MHz with a 500GB WD SATA based SSD (non-NVME).

16GB RAM is fine for 5-8 WoW Classic clients. I only see 750-1000MB RAM usage per client reported in task manager (750-800MB for each minion, 950-1000MB on my main). That's just a hair over 4GB RAM usage from all WoW clients, so even if you run 8 clients I think you'll still be well under 8GB RAM total. I'd recommend you stay at 16GB for now and focus upgrades on elsewhere first. I have more RAM being utilized by 32 browser tabs in the background (holy cow does WoWhead use a lot of RAM) than I do by 5-boxing WoW Classic.


WoW is very CPU intensive. I think the minimum to run would be and good 8-core CPU to run 8 WoW Classic clients, but 12 cores would be much better. Personally, I'd go for a Ryzen 9 3900x. A 3700x is ~$300 while a 3900x is ~$450, I think that's $150 well spent. I don't think at 3950x is really needed for 8 WoW Classic clients.

I was surprised to see how well my i9-9900k CPU (similar to a Ryzen 7, 3800x) is balancing the load - I can see all 8 cores and 16 threads are similarly loaded, so its not as though I'm limited in single-threaded performance somewhere. Task manager is reporting 5-10% CPU utilization from each minion, and 10-15% from my main, so about 50% CPU utilization total from WoW. My background CPU utilization is currently 25-35%, so a total of ~80% utilization, with spikes near 90%. So If I'm nearly loading a 8 core/16 thread CPU with 5 clients + OS and background, It would seem like a 12-core, 24 thread CPU would be similarly loaded for 8 clients.


GPU wise, running my "main" at 4k resolution all settings maxed, no Anti-Aliasing he stays locked at 60Hz without too much stress on my 1080Ti. I have 4 additional clients split across 2 additional 1600x1200 resolution monitors, so that's 4 clients at 1200x900 resolution each. When I also maxed out all 4 clients, I did notice some stutter in some areas and my GPU was reporting nearly 100% utilization. So I turned off SSAO on my 4 clients and they've stayed at 60Hz ever since. Now my main reports 10-25% GPU utilization and each minion is 5-15%. That one change keeps my GPU around 75% on average.

I originally had a NVidia 2080 (original model, non-Ti, non-Super) GPU in this workstation, but when I started multiboxing, I swapped it for my older 1080Ti because the 1080Ti has 11GB VRAM while the 2080 only has 8GB. It "seems" better, but I don't have any statisticaly numbers to back that up. I've seen other posters recommend the Radeon VII just because it has 16GB VRAM. But I don't know any way to easily see how much of your GPU utilization reported is from VRAM usage and how much GPU core usage (or if the % reported is really somewhere else like VRAM speed or PCI bus saturation, but those don't make as much sense).

GPU recommendations depend a lot on your display setup - how many monitors and what resolution are you running? If you're OK with 30Hz and lower level details on your minions you may not need to change anything at all. But assuming you're going high resolution/multiple monitors, I'd recommend the 2080ti if you can swing it, and if not, look at the older 1080ti or Radeon VII. I don't know that the 2080 Super would be a big upgrade over either of your current GPUs. Of course this fall the new 3000 series NVIDA GPUs are supposed to be out and the leaks indicate that there will be options for 10 or 20GB GDDR6 VRAM on the new RTX 3080 and 8 or 16GB GDDR6 VRAM on the new RTX 3070. That may make a 16GB 3070 the new sweet spot for many multiboxers - so maybe wait on GPU???


Exactly how much any of this will change when we go to some sort of "TBC-Classic" is a topic of much speculation, but almost no facts. I think the big question is whether they will update the classic client to be based on a more modern retail client (BfA or Shadowlands), or whether they'll keep it based on the Legion client like it is now.

1. Are my proposed upgrades sound? Will they do the job?
Yup, looks good - go with the 3900x

2. Are they, perhaps, overkill? Can I get away with spending less?
I don't think you'll get any benefit from jumping up to 32GB RAM - just stay with the 16GB you have now

3. Where will I get the most bang for my buck? Which upgrades should I prioritize of the others?
CPU 1st, GPU if you need it over your current options, RAM upgrade not needed

4. 4x8GB or 2x16GB?
Neither, stay with 2x8GB for now, if and only if you see you're getting close to maxing out your 16GB, then you can add 2 more sticks. There's really no benefit in trying to do 2x16GB instead of 4x8GB.

[Boxen]

Thank you both for your replies. It's very encouraging to have two responses that both agree 100% on how I should approach my upgrade. I'll expand on a few points raised below:

I'm targetting a single 27" 2560x1440 monitor. The main window will be 1920x1080 in the top left corner. The slaves will be 640x360 running along the bottom and down the right-hand edge.

On reflection, I may only run five accounts which would probably be MMMMP. Still undecided but 8 boxing accounts plus my 2 main accounts is a fair lick of cash each month and 8 would also require me to split my accounts over two battle.net accounts which is an extra hassle. Still pondering on that one.

Update: I've ordered the 3900X

[jak3676]

I'm targetting a single 27" 2560x1440 monitor. The main window will be 1920x1080 in the top left corner. The slaves will be 640x360 running along the bottom and down the right-hand edge.

Probably no requirement to upgrade your GPU then. With that low resolution on your minions you'll want to turn all their GFX settings down to 0 anyway. I'd definitely dive in 1st and get your feet wet. Your current PC should handle a lot. If you find that you really want to push more clients or better performance then you'll have the data to see exactly where you're bottlenecked in terms of performance.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I'd second the 3900x, though I would watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuyuS04lD4o before you stick with the x470 chipset. I went with a MSI MEG X570 ACE and couldn't be happier. System has been rock solid, and with an all-core 4.2GHz OC and undervolt, it performs well and doesn't run too hot. Also, some other options with regards to coolers in case supply issues limit your choices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_qVVhvZaY and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPaSEGe6ML0

[edit] Just saw you'd ordered the 3900x. Congrats!

[Mordikai]

I recently upgraded to a 3900X and I love it. I am using the Gigabyte x570 Aorus Ultra, but I initially had the ASUS TUF which I liked as well (just did not do some things I needed, my son is getting upgraded with that board.) To see VRAM usage I use the free utility GPU-Z from TechPowerUp. If you open the second tab it will give you a full rundown of your video cards temps, usage, fan speed, etc. I usually am between 6-7Gb of VRAM used for 5 clients. I went from a 1080Ti to a 2080Ti in the same upgrade and while it was not a huge jump I could tell it was smoother. But both cards have 11Gb of RAM so this is likely an area you might be able to save in.

[Boxen]

Hi All,

Sorry for the slow response; I hadn't noticed there had been any updates.

@Ughmahedhurtz Thanks for the link to that video. Love me some buildzoid Fortunately, I do not need PCIe 4.0 and that seems to be the only benefit to X570 over X470. My graphics card doesn't support it, my storage devices don't support it. Even if they did, I'm not pumping enough data over the PCIe interface to warrant it. Having said all that, the Aorus Extreme looks amazing! Other than a new case to improve airflow, I think my cooling solution is adequate for now. I don't intend to overclock the 3900X at all. Stock performance will be more than sufficient. This upgrade was all about cores, not MHz.

@Mordikai You know I use GPU-Z all the time and I never open that tab so I had no idea it could do that so thanks for the tip. Graphics card-wise, I ordered myself a 2080ti. Yes, I know it's being replaced in six months time but it's way more graphics card than I need anyway and there's always something bigger and better coming down the pike. This way, I'll get six months extra usage out of the card and it's probably going to last me as long as my GTX 970 did.

Next upgrades will be a more free-flowing case and a doubling of system RAM.

Edit: Oh, and I need a second monitor as well. Wifey has been using my only spare while she's been working from home. Curse you Covid-19!

Edit 2: GPU-Z! Doh! I read that as CPU-Z. That's why I never saw the tab; I was using the wrong app.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I don't intend to overclock the 3900X at all. Stock performance will be more than sufficient. This upgrade was all about cores, not MHz.

That's exactly why I chose to go with the 4.2GHz all-core OC and 1.25v undervolt. What I was seeing in initial testing was relatively poor cinebench R20 scores, likely as a result of a really high 4-6 core 4.5GHz auto-boost at something like 1.475v, followed by a rapid temperature spike, followed by thermal throttling. I played with voltage a bit on mine and really wasn't able to go past about 4.2GHz with any consistency at any voltage, so I just left it at 4.2/1.25V. The scores are up where they should be, the system runs cool, and I don't have any more bizarre "surges" in individual cores as it tries (and struggles) to allocate boost clocks. I went through about a solid week of futzing with configs to find what kept things down below 70C under stress loads while still yielding good benchmarks in the tools I use regularly (games, 7-zip, ffmpeg) and it's been superb since I just left it where it's at. It feels like having two PCs worth of power in one versus my i7-6700K.

The one thing I did do a little different this build was pick up a license for http://www.argusmonitor.com/ and use it to micro-manage fans/pumps rather than trusting the janky NZXT fan software or the somewhat limited BIOS fan controls. I was able to tune down the EVGA water pump (with a fan-header conversion cable) so the pump whine is now gone. I also set the chipset fan to start spinning at 40C and slowly ramp up, which keeps chipset temps down around 45C at idle and ~60C max, versus the stock setting which had it sitting at 65C+ at idle and 75-80C under load. I'm sure it would have been fine as I'm not really stressing the board in my use cases, but I prefer my equipment to run as cool as possible which greatly extends component life.

Anywho, happy hunting!

[Boxen]

Sounds like you and I have a very similar philosophy on how to manage our PC components

I'll take a look at Argus Monitor. Like you, I'm not satisfied with the fidelity with which I can control my system fans and, so far, have always had to choose between too much and too little. Thanks for all the advice. Much appreciated.