Hey!
Gonna buy a i5 9400f, 3000MHz memory and motherboard.
Do you think a GTX 970/980 will handle medium settings in raids, 15-20+ at 1440p? Trying to spend as little as possible and buy a used graphic card.
Thanks!
Depends as WoW performance isn’t always limited by raw compute power.
Ram: 8 gb okish, 16 optimal
Storage: decent sata ssd or better.
GPU: depending on your local prices those old GTX may not be the best choice. GTX 970 vs rx 480/580, then used Vega 56, 64, GTX 1070 and up. I would avoid older generations plus GTX 970 isn’t that good.
Think I gonna try a gtx 970, maybe 980. Should be able to handle raids at about 50~ fps I think? At medium.
But why? Are they super cheap or something? 970 isn’t that powerfull and has limited VRAM. Like right now most second hand market cards are NVIDIA Pascal and AMD Polaris. There is way less Maxwell and the prices may be more speculative plus electronics do age. You just can pay more for less.
I’m using Vega 64 with TR1920x and Play on 3440x1440 mode 7. I used quad core skylake i5 with R9 Fury and that could lag on some mass mob fights and alike. 970 would be weaker than fury.
Yeah, or well kind off I think. 
They go for 100 euro, and would prefer something around that price, maybe max 150 euro.
You may fit GTX 1070 within that limit with luck. Not sure about Vega 56, worth checking. If not then there should be 8 GB RX 580 / 480 to pick from easily below 150 Eur. 6 GB GTX 1060 could also be on the radar although they are less popular and the 3GB versions aren’t worth it (those compete vs RX 470/570)
FPS in raids are limited by the CPU (and RAM speed too) unless you are playing on an integrated chip or ancient GPU.
A GTX 970 can handle 60 FPS easily in 1440P.
I can tell you that because i just upgraded from one.
Now i’m playing on a RTX 2070S with a Ryzen 3900x and 3600Mhz CL15 RAM (was I5-3570K and 2133Mhz RAM before).
My FPS more than doubled in raids.
Still, i have drops below 60 on worldbosses.
On mythic Azshara i could barely hold 60.
The fastest CPU for WoW (and gaming in general) would be a 9900K at 5Ghz.
But even then you will have drops below 60 in extreme cases.
I would recommend a Ryzen 3600 with at least 3200Mhz RAM.
It’s a bit more expensive than the Intel 9400F.
But faster in Singlethreading (most important for WoW) and it has 12 threads instead of only 6 (which is way more future proof).
I would not recommend a CPU with less than 8 threads for gaming nowadays.
It will only get worse when the new consoles with Ryzen are out and games will take advantage of more than 8 threads on a regular basis.
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Don’t buy a i5 9400f even with the current price drops I would say its not worth it unless you can afford a 9900k for gaming I would go with AMD now if you can afford it Ryzen 3600 or 3600x with an x450 motherboard and 16gb ddr4 3200-3600mhz RAM price performance they are the best CPU’s on the market at the minuet.
if you cant afford it you could get the older 2700 for around ÂŁ130-140 for around the same price as a 9400f which at that price is a total bargain then you always have the option of upgrading to a 3rd gen Ryzen later on or even a 4th gen Ryzen which come out next year.
GPU if you don’t mind a secondhand card i would go with either a GTX1070 or Vega56 or you can pick up a rx580 8gb or gtx 1060 6gb for starting around £50-60 can get some good deals on them on Ebay.
Thanks alot for answer! Thanks all, not sure how to quote more. 
How about 2600x, 3200MHz and GTX 1060 (maybe GTX 970)? Will this perform better than 9400F in raids? 2700 is abit too expensive. Im really trying to get good enough hardware with as little money as possible. 
AMD 2600X
Asus B450 Plus
Corsair 16GB 3200MHz
VS
i5 9400f
Any motherboard
3000/3200MHz memory 16GB
They cost like exactly the same. I ONLY play WoW, nothing else at all. So this is only WoW performance.
Edit: NVM I may go for 2700x after all if I go forAMD.
Don’t get a second gen Ryzen for WoW.
The 3000 series has much better singlethreading performance, which is most important for WoW.
A 3600 is the best bang for the buck atm.
Will do that! Can I use a socket AM4 v2 motherboard with it? Like B450 chipset? Do I need to look for something special? Able to handle 3200MHz memory?
Im looking at:
ASUS PRIME B450-PLUS
and:
Corsair 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3200Mhz CL16 Vengeance
With a AMD 3600. And probably go for GTX 1060.
if you go for the 1060 make sure its the 6gb version the 3gb card is a cut down card and is a good quite a bit slower than the 6gb card.
Any 350/450 series board will support a 3600 with a bios update all the new boards should have the latest bios when you buy them.
As for the ram with Ryzen it depends a lot more on which gen CPU you have and as well as the motherboard and the ram used most first gen Ryzen on x370/350 boards 3200mhz cl14 was the sweet spot you can push the ram higher if you have a good board on one of the more recent bios my x370 using a 16gb Pariot Viper 3600mhz Cl,15 kit will on my x370 Croshair vii will do 3400mhz at CL,15 with a 1700x @3.8ghz which is pretty good for a first gen Ryzen on a first gen board, but just for comparison my old Corsair vengeance kit will do 3200mhz at cl16 and wont go any faster with out crashing.
3rd gen Ryzen the sweet spot for performance is 3600mhz so even with a b450 so go with the fastest ram do you can afford do some research though before you buy some ram plays nicer with Ryzen than others do as a rule of thumb any ram using Samsung B-dies tends to give the best performance with Ryzen.
You could get the rated speed if not what you can do is under clock the ram running it at a lower speed and then tighten up the timings which can sometimes give better performance than running faster ram with looser timings go with the fastest you can get and then just play around with the speed and timings in the bios till you find something that works and is stable.
How to Manually Tune Your DDR4 Memory For Ryzen
AMD Ryzen 3000 Memory Benchmark & Common RAM Mistakes
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GTX 970 has limited VRAM and you may hit that limit. The 6GB GTX 1060 or 8GB RX 580/480 are much better options and are younger meaning the electronics is less likely to die from age. And as others mentioned avoid 3GB GTX 1060 due to VRAM but also due to lower performance.
Looking on Polish allegro on buy-now offers there is few 1060 6GB from 130 EUR. There is a lot of 8GB RX 480/580 starting from 90 EUR (and 3,5GB GTX 970 are bit higher while being inferior). Bid auctions (like on ebay too) could yield lower prices if lucky - and the only way to fit GTX 1070 or Vega 56 in your budget.
https://www.techspot.com/review/1780-geforce-1060-vs-radeon-580-vs-radeon-570/
It all comes down to price. The difference for non-high-end setup will be small. And WoW scales nicely among at least few cores. The game doesn’t have any obsession with single threaded that much and the OP is on a tight budget so GPU would be the element to focus.
Some of my benchmarks: https://rk.edu.pl/en/benchmarking-and-analyzing-world-warcraft-performance/
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AMD RX 570 should go for that price, even less, and is a more modern choice
RX580/480 second hand start at around 90+ EUR.
Nice, I wasn’t very up to date on the prices I guess. Although it might also depend on the location
WoW scales very little with cores, more than 4 won’t give you any big improvements to FPS unlike some modern game engines which require 6-8 to run optimally.
Also WoW does scale VERY well with higher IPC (singlethreading, clockspeeds etc).
The 3000 Ryzen series has a big improvement in IPC over the 2000 series.
Buying a 2nd gen Ryzen for WoW now instead of going for a 3rd gen would be a decision the op would regret soon.
About your benchmarks, the CPUs you tested all have very low singlethreading performance.
Also you did not test any 2nd or 3rd gen Ryzen for comparison, neither any current Intels.
My old I5-3570K has about the same performance as the fastest CPU in your benchmark, if not a little higher.
Now i can tell you that my 3900x which i got like a week ago has doubled my framerate.
The 3600 i recommended will be almost the same in WoW performance wise.
EDIT: did a quick search and found a benchmark with the 2600 vs 3600 in games:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpUSSXDAsmY
You can see the difference can be quite big, especially in cpu-limited games with an old engine like counterstrike (mostly singlethreaded like WoW).
4 is more than one and it’s a much simpler game so doesn’t need to use 6 or 8 cores.
Doubt it. It would have to be a perfect scenario of not being GPU, bandwidth, network and WoW server limited. So you go to some secluded old zone where there is no one else and maybe there you could see CPU effect on the FPS which would be 200+ if not more. In more realistic scenarios there is way more performance bottlenecks this game can show. Even top of the line systems can show odd performance problems, quite often after a new major patch 
Good but not groundbreaking. The 2000 series are still here and are heavily discounted. If the OP is on a tight budget picking double-discounted XMass Ryzen 2000 could be much better value (where as juicy 3000 chips will likely keep high price due to demand and XMass sales). If the price isn’t critical then yes 3000 would be a good choice but it won’t make or break the PC.
Some are still using Sandy Bridge CPUs and don’t feel the need to change. It’s all about how much you want to spend and how often.
Define “very low” as IMHO you are exaggerating by a lot. All of Ryzens have modern single threaded performance: https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-7-2700x-review,9.html which in conjunction with low requirements of WoW allows people to play with lower tier hardware. Most popular steam GPU is still GTX 1060 and so forth.
The more budget you have the more expensive parts you can buy. The question is does 3600 is still within budget of the OP alongside acceptable GPU? Also did you measured your framerates in different scenarios, 1% lows etc?
The question still stands. Is upgrading from 120 FPS to 140 FPS worth the extra cash and do OP has it? What if OP has a 60 Hz display and will cap WoW at 60 FPS anyway? What if that 20 FPS upgrade requires much better GPU than the OP will have?
Also do note that in 2020 we will get Ryzen 4000 with yet another improvement. You would have to upgrade your PC yearly to stay at the “top”.
Like i mentioned above already, i come from an ivy bridge CPU.
I really did feel the need to upgrade for better FPS in raids and in general.
It’s not that it was unplayable, but in 30man heroic raids my FPS were way too low to perform at 100% (drops to about 20 FPS).
Even with 20man in mythic, there are some bosses where i had drops to 30ish (Azshara e.g.).
Now im getting ~60 there.
It makes a big difference, because WoW sub 45ish FPS feels like playing in slowmotion.
Low requirements for questing and such yes… but raiding and worldbosses is on another level.
The game is very cpu-limited in raids.
I have been playing and raiding progress in WoW with my I5-3570K since MOP, that’s 7 years.
So you would assume i know my FPS and can compare them to what i get now with the Ryzen 3900x.
We are not talking about 120 vs 140 in WoW.
More like 45 vs 60 in raids.
Ryzen 3600 is out now not in 2020 and it’s the best bang for the buck if you want to upgrade right now.
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I would say the game is self limited wherever mass actions take place - wherever it’s mass players interactions or a raid pull where like many mobs cast at the same time. Move up to massive wPVP and the server crashes.
Assumption?. I had 60 FPS on 1080p with my old PC (R9 Fury and i5 6600) and the only time it had problems is mass small trash in Uldir casting at the same time. My current Vega 64 and TR 1920X easily handles WoW at 3440x1440 at mode 7.
In my local shop 3600 is 160% the price of 2600 new. It’s better but also costs more.