BfA 8.1 Entry Level Gaming PC Setup

Games, Gaming & Hardware
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Hi,

Just got back into WoW for the first time since Vanilla (yes, a decade long break indeed) to raid with my brother and his wife and she kindly lent me her macbook pro (2015) to do so. I run all settings on 1 and disabled a thing or two and despite a decent questing and even dungeon experience, overall during raids the FPS is just too low for me to perform decently.

So with my small budget I’m investing in an entry-level gaming PC and would appreciate some guidance. Not looking to run on Ultra (I’m used to running on Potato) but some decent mid/high-end graphics would be great - anything that can fluidly handle a boss fight without looking like minecraft.

First question : CPU : Ryzen 3 1200 - OR - Intel Pentium G5500

Everyone claims WoW runs better on Intel than AMD because of single threading, but with BfA 8.1 it seems multithreading is playing a larger role. Any opinions on this? Would the Intel still beat the AMD at this point? Also considering just getting a Ryzen 2200g APU and forget about GPU for now.

Second question : GPU : GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4G (MSI) - OR - RX 560 AERO ITX 4G (MSI)

Any preference?

The rest is pretty much established, unless people recommend otherwise :

MOBO : ASRock B450M-Pro 4
PSU : be quiet! Pure Power 11 500W 80PLUS Gold
RAM : G.Skill RipJaws 5 Series 8 G (2x 4 G) DDR4 2666 MHz CL15
SSD : Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500 G
Console/tower : Zalman S3

Thanks.

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don’t buy a dual core in 2019. personally i wouldn’t even look at intel until you’re in the 9600k range, and even then i’d think hard before i bought one of those. once you’re at the 9700k and 9900k intel have a pretty clear advantage but they’re very expensive, pretty bad value and well out of your price range.

the exception could be an i5 8400 at a good price.

the budget cpus that make the most sense are the 2200g for a very basic budget system with no gpu and the 2600 for a strong versatile value chip.

i’m not the most up to date on the current pricing of budget gpus to be honest, but from what i’ve heard the rx 570 is excellent value right now.

i think you’re overspending on the power supply in the context of what this system is. 500w is a good place to be, but unless you’ve got a good deal consider getting something a bit cheaper.

ryzen scales hard with fast ram, look into 3000mhz which shouldn’t be too much more expensive.

note that the motherboard you’ve selected will only work with the amd cpus, not the intel ones.

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Hey Retirex, thanks for the response.

For the CPU, I hadn’t considered the quad core advantage.
This BfA raid video suggests that boss fights could be run at 10 settings with the Ryzen 2200 APU. So the Ryzen 5 2400g would be cheaper and more efficient than the CPU+APU combo mentioned above and, as you suggested, I could invest in higher RAM.

The PSU is 60 € which seems to be worthwhile given it’s a quality PSU.

I didn’t know about the Intel-ASrock compatibility issues - thanks for pointing that out. I guess one more reason to stick with the Ryzen.

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note that the person in that video is running at a very low resolution, 1360x768. the typical resolution of most monitors is 1920x1080, which is twice as many pixels. that means that it’s much more demanding for the graphics card to run.

he’s also not playing at 10. if you look below the 1-10 presets slider, you can see that he’s got settings on 4 for example. i also might be blind but i couldn’t see the framerate anywhere on the screen.

in short, don’t read too much into the video. if you buy a 2200g, you will be able to play, but not on massively high settings.

the 2400g is generally not as attractive as the 2200g. all depends on local pricing at the time of purchase, but for the most part it doesn’t have the same bang for the buck that the 2200g does because you’re in a price range where you’re pretty close to a budget CPU+GPU combination which outperforms it pretty handily.

it’s not an asrock intel problem, it’s a socket and chipset problem. the board you listed has the AM4 socket and B450 chipset, and that will only work with amd ryzen cpus. intel’s most recent processors use the LGA1151 socket and intel-specific chipsets.

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Hmm I hadn’t notice the settings you pointed out from that video. I guess since it looked so much better & more fluid than my current rig I was seduced.

So it seems that the Ryzen 1200 CPU & either a 1050 Ti or RX 570 GPU is the way to go if I want to get the graphics settings high-ish.

Didn’t know about the socket/chipset element, kind of a tech noob to tell you the truth, but that makes sense.

In terms of RAM, this tech video and this one seem to suggest that as far as the Ryzen 3 is concerned, I can get away with 2666mhz as opposed to 3200mhz without a significant difference.

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at least where i live, the ryzen 3 1200 and 2200g are basically the same price. if that’s true for you as well, then you should get the 2200g even if you’re buying a graphics card to go with it. it’s slightly faster and it has the strong integrated graphics available should you need it (such as if your graphics card died and you needed to wait for a replacement).

here’s a comparison between them.

the rx 570 is much faster than the 1050 ti. according to techpowerup, you’re looking at an average performance advantage of 47% over the 1050 ti for the rx 570.

by the way, ryzen can be a bit finicky with memory. ideally you buy a kit that is validated to work with the motherboard you buy to ensure compatability. conveniently the motherboard manufacturers validate memory on their boards and release lists for this. here’s the one for the asrock board you mentioned. look under Raven Ridge, those are the 2200g and 2400g.
https:// www. asrock. com/mb/AMD/B450M%20Pro4/index.asp#MemoryRR

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Where I am they’re about a 25€ difference, which may be worth it.

I’m definitely sold on the RX 570 in terms of performance over 1050 Ti for basically the same price.

EDIT : Found what I was looking for. Very limited selection on the QVL list for what I wanted but found a Patriot Vpier DDR4 2x4GB @3000Mhz for 60 euros that’s on the ASrock B450M Pro4 QVL list.

As for RAM compatibility, I’m having an issue finding RAM on that QVL list that fits my needs. I’d rather have 2 sticks than 1 and I can’t really afford more than a 2X4GB setup, but all of the 2x4GB they seem to have on their QVL list, for any brand, are for sticks no higher than 2400mhz…

So I see four options :

  1. Go for a RAM model that’s almost exactly what they have on their list (ex. F4-3200C16D-16GTZB is on their list but it’s a 2x8GB, while F4-3200C16D-8GTZB is not on their list but it’s a 2x4GB which works for me)
  2. Find the cheapest 2X8GB 3000mhz on their list.
  3. Go with a 2x4GB 2400mhz on the list and hope for the best.
  4. Pick another Motherboard : I found a 2x4GB RAM setup on the MSI B450M Pro M-2 and B450M Gaming Plus QVL lists. Seems crazy to choose CPU based off RAM sticks but I guess that’s how it goes, though it’s too bad because a newegg comparison I ran seems to really favor the ASrock over both MSI boards.
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sounds good. would also like to mention overclocking. both the 1200 and 2200g are unlocked, which means that the user can manually fiddle with the clock speeds they run at. the b450 chipset also supports this, and the cooler amd ships with the cpus is good enough to support some light overclocking.

it’s fully optional, but it’s there should you want to squeeze a little more out of them. the 1200 in particular has fairly low clock speeds at 3.1ghz base 3.4ghz max boost, and i think you can get it up to at least 3.7ghz on the stock cooler without too much trouble.

you can also overclock the graphics card should you want to improve its performance a bit.

don’t have to use it if you don’t want to, but it’s at least good to be aware that it’s available. there are many guides out there on the internet going through how to overclock those cpus, so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding one you like.

also, ram does not have a speed by itself. the speed you find on the memory is simply what it’s rated to be able to do. this means that if you plop memory into a motherboard, it’s going to run at whatever the default memory speed is for that platform. don’t make the mistake of paying for 3000mhz and then running it at less than that.

there should be a simple toggle to enable the full speed it’s rated for, on intel it’s called XMP (extreme memory profile). i don’t own a ryzen cpu myself so i don’t know the name of the setting there. it’s pretty likely it’s just called XMP.

as a sidenote, it’s possible that you won’t be able to run it at the full speed. having memory that’s able to do it isn’t enough, you also need a motherboard and a cpu that can do it. motherboards can handle memory speeds better or worse and each individual cpu is slightly different due to the phenomenon known as the silicon lottery.

if you are having trouble, update the motherboard’s bios to the latest version and see if that helps. usually memory support is improved in later bios revisions. if you still can’t get it to work, just reduce the memory speed by one or two steps and it should work just fine.

not looking to discourage you, just want you to have some prior knowledge of it in case it does come up.

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I did indeed see something about potential overclocking for this CPU and MOBO.

In the tech sheet for my graphics card however, in the chipset section where it says “overclocked” it says “no”, but this website - http s://www.techpowerup.c om/reviews/Sapphire/RX_570_Pulse/33.html -seems to have been able to overclock it, so I should be good to go there. But even if not, given that WoW is the only game I play right now, overclocking might not be an issue, just a nice plus as you suggested.

As for RAM speed, the MOBO says it supports DDR4 3200+, so hopefully I can run my 3000 RAM at 2933 or at least 2800.

I’ll look up the Ryzen version of XMP.

And if there are issues I will indeed update the MOBO’s Bios.

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That means that it’s factory overclocked. So say a certain GPU like the RX 570 has an official clock speed of 1000MHz. The board partners can then sell the GPU at 1000MHz or they can sell an overclocked version that’s running at 1100MHz for example.

All graphics cards can be overclocked, but not all of them are pre-overclocked when they come out of the box.

What motherboard vendors list as a supported memory frequency is pretty irrelevant. Who knows what kit that was or how many CPUs they had to try before they found one that works. The best thing to do is to buy something that is on the QVL list.

Your rate of success varies depending on clock speed. The higher you go, the higher the chance that it won’t work. 3000MHz is a pretty ordinary memory speed nowadays so it probably won’t be any trouble just wanted to mention it anyway.

And yes, should you be unable to get the system stable with 3000 then something a bit lower should work with a pretty small performance loss.

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Ok that makes sense.

Ordered all the parts! Thank you very much for all your help throughout this process, I really appreciate it. Best to you.

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