I picked up a used Dell Optiplex 980 small form factor PC to continue testing really cheap PC's for harware boxing WoW. This model has an Intel i5-650 (2 core, 4 thread) CPU at 3.20 GHz, 8 GB of DDR3 RAM, and I pop'd in an Nvidia GT 1030 GPU and a 120 GB SSD. The PC can be found for about $150 USD.


The real reason to get a small form factor PC like this over the "ultra small form factor (USFF)" or "mini-PC" above is that this can take 1/2 height Nvidia GT 1030 GPU. For about another $90, you get a much, much better graphics card. The GT 1030 is still a really bad graphics card, when measured against any other dedicated GPU, but it is signifigantly better than any integrated GPU. The bonus point of the GT 1030 is that it can be found in the 1/2 height version which is what's needed for these small form factor PC's that can't take a full height GPU. The GT 1030 is also a low-power card, so you can drop it in just about any PC and not have to worry about also having to upgrade the power supply.


This GPU finds the sweet spot for WoW classic - delivering about all the performance someone would want, but still at a dirt-cheap price. I'd be happy to use this as my main computer, so long as I wasn't doing much more than single-boxing WoW-Classic.


Running around Thunder Bluff I had my choice of settings to stay above 60 Hz. With graphic settings at "5" I'm consistantly above 60 FPS at 1080P, or 40 FPS at 4k resolutoin. I can even do select setting at "7" at 1080P so long as I turn down SSAO. Open world I seemed locked at 100 FPS with those settings. Org at raid night was considerably lower at ~25Hz, but I'm on a very high-pop server at peak time - I even get lag on my watercooled i9-9900k w/ Nvidia 2080. So Org on raid night may not be a great test.


For <$250, this is realy a raid-ready PC. I think its almost overkill to call this a "potato PC" - at least when it comes to WoW-Classic. I really don't see any reason to spend more for a follower PC. Price shopping around Amazon and Ebay, you may be able to piece something similar together for a bit closer to $200 if you find some good deals and don't mind doing bit of DIY PC repair. I was actually looking for a Dell 7010/9010 (something that would come with an i5-2400, quad-core CPU) when I found this model. I would still recommend something with an i5-2400 or better as a good CPU for basically the same price. But I got this a bit cheaper without a hard drive (which was fine because I still have a few old SSD lying around).


Comparing this to the mini-PC above almost seems odd. The "small form factor (SFF)" Optiplex 790 is easily 10x the size of the EliteDesk 705 G1 "mini", although this still much smaller than traditional PC's. Comparing the 790 SFF to my main desktop PC - the SFF is probably 1/4 the size. It about the size of an old-school VCR, or about like a case of 48x soda cans. Where the 705 G1 "mini" is about the same size as my wifi router, or a medium sized book.


I'm still going through all the Windows 10 updates, but I'll see if I can test WoW-Retail on this thing tomorrow - I expect it'll work OK, but I'll probably turn down GFX settings a bit more.


Overall, if you can fit size of a stack of these, and you're OK with the $250 price point, this performs much better than everything cheaper. Its more than 2x the performance for less than 2x the price. If you need to stay as cheap as possible, and you're OK with accepting some performance hits, the mini-PC is great. If you want much better performance, can afford to go up to $250 per PC and you can fit the size, the small form factor Dell is great. This should also be much more future proof as we look forward to TBC and maybe WOLK-Classic.


(If you really don't want to sacrifice performance, but you still need it to be as small as possible - look for a modern Ryzen 5 mini-PC. That'll probably run you $500+ USD and it'll still be larger than the mini, but it should have similar performance.)