[Question] Dedicated Honorbuddy Sessions Rig

[xmdsx]

Hello everyone. The purpose of this thread is to discuss my intentions and ideas and get feedback from the community.

I'm currently working with 2 farmers, 1 shuffler, and one auction account running 4 different battle.net's and wow instances.
Hardware setup is:
AMD Phenom 9100e 1.80ghz quad core
4gb ddr2 1066 ram
geforce 440 gt

I can barely have these 4 wow instances running at the same time, unless all the settings are on minimal, all windows are resized to a very small window, and im not running any other programs. I currently have made well over a million gold since I began using HB and the profiles and ideas the community has given, of which I've sold some to recover the cost of the game, the accounts, the game time, and honorbuddy costs. Ontop of that, i've made a bit of cash on the side. Now things get fun.

I've recently come into a bit of money, and have a brand new budget of roughly +/-$1000. Now I was thinking of getting:
AMD FX-8150 3.6ghz 8-core (OC to 4.5)
1600 16gb ram
geforce gtx 560 ti

the price is roughly $300-400 for all of this, and it seems like a powerful setup for the amount of money, including all of the other parts like case, hard drive, etc, I threw together a rig in newegg and came up with a $700 water cooled powerhouse. The reasoning behind this choice, besides the price-to-power cost, was that with 8 cores running over 4ghz I would be able to handle many wow instances running at once, alongside this was getting a higher memory clock RAM aswell as a higher memory bandwidth for the graphics card. I was hoping this machine could power 8-10 instances of wow at the same time comfortably, even if all settings were minimal and all windows were resized tiny.

To the community, any thoughts at all? Why I should get part B instead of part A? Why farming on realm A is better then farming on realm B? Is getting into wow gold farming even worth my time? Before I make any decision I could use your opinion.

Another question and thought, if duping is still around, and alot of the items from the cleared AH are still being withheld, is farming gold in wow even viable anymore, unless one has a dupe themselves?

 

[Battler624]

BRB Making you a PCPartPicker List

just one thing to note would you like me to put the items in a case? and get a monitor?

 

[xmdsx]

Only if the monitor has DVI and isn't terribly expensive x.x, a case would be nice as well, I had planned on a case that came with 5 120mm fans, and was ganna put a water cooler heatsink on my processor

edit: i guess i could get converters, so the monitor doesnt HAVE to have dvi

 

[Battler624]

There is one thing i do not understand..
a CPU "good one like yours" is going for no less than 170$
the 560 Ti going for 217$ "i took the 7870 which is better for 170$ and comes with a 15$ off combo if you take the FX-8150 which i took"
these alone are 340$ at the cheapest without including memory or motherboard how the hell did you get all that for 400$?

anyway i created the best i could for the cheapest possible

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-8150 3.6GHz 8-Core Processor ($169.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock 980DE3/U3S3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($69.99 @ Microcenter)
Memory: PNY 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($89.99 @ Best Buy)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($74.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB Video Card ($169.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Rosewill Blackbone ATX Mid Tower Case ($31.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Thermaltake SMART 550W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($44.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Acer G206HLBbd 60Hz 20.0" Monitor ($97.31 @ TigerDirect)
Total: $734.24
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-08-09 20:54 EDT-0400)


Edit 2: i can possibly create less if you want to go slightly lower graphics "7750 for example and intel CPU i3-something"

 

[xmdsx]

The setup looks nice. Thats about what I was thinking, but I had geforce 560, and it seems in terms of benchmarks, the 7870 is the same price but more power. I think ill go with that instead. The whole point of the build is multitasking with between 8 and 12 windows of wow open at the same time, and trying to prevent lag where I can in both the wow instances and sessions of honorbuddy.

edit: instead of going lower, theirs room to go slightly higher, for example if another $50-100 would make a big difference in getting a different part or two. I need to have as many instances of wow and hb open as possible without bogging down.

edit2: the 7870 is a pcie 3.0, will that work in a pcie 2.0 slot?

 

[Battler624]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Microcenter)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H60 54.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($49.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock H87M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($74.99 @ Microcenter)
Memory: PNY 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($89.99 @ Best Buy)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($74.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB Video Card ($169.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Rosewill Blackbone ATX Mid Tower Case ($31.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Thermaltake SMART 550W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($44.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Acer G206HLBbd 60Hz 20.0" Monitor ($97.31 @ TigerDirect)
Total: $834.23
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-08-09 21:17 EDT-0400)


a much better build for 99.99$ more 1 cent less than a 100$
with this build you could go intel haswell and PCI-Express 3.0 to unleash the true power of GDDR5 graphics with a liqued cooler allowing you to go upto 5Ghz safely "but i suggest going 4.8Ghz and letting it run from reset to reset

 

[Battler624]

The setup looks nice. Thats about what I was thinking, but I had geforce 560, and it seems in terms of benchmarks, the 7870 is the same price but more power. I think ill go with that instead. The whole point of the build is multitasking with between 8 and 12 windows of wow open at the same time, and trying to prevent lag where I can in both the wow instances and sessions of honorbuddy.

edit: instead of going lower, theirs room to go slightly higher, for example if another $50-100 would make a big difference in getting a different part or two. I need to have as many instances of wow and hb open as possible without bogging down.

edit2: the 7870 is a pcie 3.0, will that work in a pcie 2.0 slot?

Yes all PCI-Express 3.0 are backward compatible just that it will give you less graphix for same power.

another reason i go with intel is because AMD has no love for PCI-E 3 yet and that WoW is not optimized to use all the 8 cores on the AMD Cpu but can pretty much use everything possible on the i5

 

[Liferose]

Graphics isn't the most important when you're dealing with sheer number of WoW's open, I can open 3 and play a game at the same time and maintain ~60 fps in all of them on Ultra. Basically though the only way to find out how much power you need is to determine how many you want open, the most as possible is in the eye of the beholder. I could open 30, but at what point when your computer crashes do you call it too much? I've seen crazy math out there, but I do not have the expertise for such a thing.

Although slightly biased as I have a Lightning Radeon 7970 which I got for a steal, even so I would never get it again. AMD cards aren't as good for WoW as Nvidia and have horrible drivers to boot, which is funny considering an AMD cpu is best for such a task.

Edit: Not sure where you're getting the cpu thing btw. Generally unless you're opening a mad amount or trying to keep a decent budget AMD is the choice. WoW wont utilize more than a couple cores for the actual game bits, and spread out the non-important junk to the others.

 

[Battler624]

Graphics isn't the most important when you're dealing with sheer number of WoW's open, I can open 3 and play a game at the same time and maintain ~60 fps in all of them on Ultra. Basically though the only way to find out how much power you need is to determine how many you want open, the most as possible is in the eye of the beholder. I could open 30, but at what point when your computer crashes do you call it too much? I've seen crazy math out there, but I do not have the expertise for such a thing.

Although slightly biased as I have a Lightning Radeon 7970 which I got for a steal, even so I would never get it again. AMD cards aren't as good for WoW as Nvidia and have horrible drivers to boot, which is funny considering an AMD cpu is best for such a task.

Edit: Not sure where you're getting the cpu thing btw. Generally unless you're opening a mad amount or trying to keep a decent budget AMD is the choice. WoW wont utilize more than a couple cores for the actual game bits, and spread out the non-important junk to the others.

as a previous owner of AMD and now going 670's in SLI i can say that both AMD and Nvidia will get head to head in single GPU price/power ratio and maybe AMD beating it by a little if the topic creator will go for almost 900$ i can make it a bit better
mind you Liferose that the TC is going to run a lot of WoW's and wow is a CPU intensive game and a pretty RAM eater and not a GPU intensive one

so going for a 7870 2GB for that price will take down any Nvidia GPU and going for the 7950 3GB will take down ANYTHING (for the price of 860$ 30$ more) but going for 660 Ti "the closest competitor to the 7870" will make the price 860 which i will automatically refuse and either go with 7870 or 7950.

of course everything changes "well not everything" if the TC is going for a 1K$ as a build i can make a much better refined one "but will be confused between a 6GB 7970 vs a 4GB 770 but most likely go with the 770"

 

[Liferose]

as a previous owner of AMD and now going 670's in SLI i can say that both AMD and Nvidia will get head to head in single GPU price/power ratio and maybe AMD beating it by a little if the topic creator will go for almost 900$ i can make it a bit better

Well I've owned both brands as well, but it's not very wise to say just because you owned the two that you can accurately say each performs the same for the price. Which isn't true when it comes to video cards. Mine retail is $500, performs very sub-par compared to the Nvidia counterparts, and no room for overclocking.

mind you Liferose that the TC is going to run a lot of WoW's and wow is a CPU intensive game and a pretty RAM eater and not a GPU intensive one

Yes that was the very first thing I mentioned.

so going for a 7870 2GB for that price will take down any Nvidia GPU and going for the 7950 3GB will take down ANYTHING (for the price of 860$ 30$ more) but going for 660 Ti "the closest competitor to the 7870" will make the price 860 which i will automatically refuse and either go with 7870 or 7950.

Nvidia graphics will generally perform better with WoW on the low end spectrum, as it's better engineered for it. Hell, Blizzard endorses it. Not sure how the card listed will beat this this this, or really any of these for such a price. You seem rather deadfast on AMD cards, while I prefer to take in all of the research I can get before I even think of buying. The performance difference is marginal the higher up the card you go as far as I can tell.

 

[Battler624]

Well I've owned both brands as well, but it's not very wise to say just because you owned the two that you can accurately say each performs the same for the price. Which isn't true when it comes to video cards. Mine retail is $500, performs very sub-par compared to the Nvidia counterparts, and no room for overclocking.

Talking about mid-range "650-660Ti" vs "7750-7870"

Yes that was the very first thing I mentioned.



Nvidia graphics will generally perform better with WoW on the low end spectrum, as it's better engineered for it. Hell, Blizzard endorses it. Not sure how the card listed will beat this this this, or really any of these for such a price. You seem rather deadfast on AMD cards, while I prefer to take in all of the research I can get before I even think of buying. The performance difference is marginal the higher up the card you go as far as I can tell.

for performance "FPS" the 7870 will outperform ANY of the cards you listed "unless you listed a 660 TI which i didn't notice" here's a comparison between the 660 and 7870
GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 7870 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare
and another
Radeon HD 7870 vs GeForce GTX 660
but with a 660 ti its a different matter
Radeon HD 7870 vs GeForce GTX 660 Ti

of course considering he's running too many WoW's the amount of vRam will be tremendous if paying 60$ is worth the 6 FPS then go with this Asus GeForce GTX 660 Ti 3GB Video Card (GTX660 TI-DC2OC-3GD5) - PCPartPicker
if not stay with the 7870

LifeRose you must also notice that the AMD cards push more texture in less time "cuz of the wider memory bus" thus will make the botting perform much smoother and i actually believe because you will be running a lot of WoW's unless you plan on spending 60$ more than the build i already put there or 1K$ then going with the 7870 WILL be better.

on a side note LifeRose whats your current pc?

 

[Liferose]

for performance "FPS" the 7870 will outperform ANY of the cards you listed "unless you listed a 660 TI which i didn't notice" here's a comparison between the 660 and 7870
GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 7870 ? Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare
and another
Radeon HD 7870 vs GeForce GTX 660
but with a 660 ti its a different matter
Radeon HD 7870 vs GeForce GTX 660 Ti

of course considering he's running too many WoW's the amount of vRam will be tremendous if paying 60$ is worth the 6 FPS then go with this Asus GeForce GTX 660 Ti 3GB Video Card (GTX660 TI-DC2OC-3GD5) - PCPartPicker
if not stay with the 7870

LifeRose you must also notice that the AMD cards push more texture in less time "cuz of the wider memory bus" thus will make the botting perform much smoother and i actually believe because you will be running a lot of WoW's unless you plan on spending 60$ more than the build i already put there or 1K$ then going with the 7870 WILL be better.

on a side note LifeRose whats your current pc?

Video card memory, pixel rate, ..etc is irrelevant for botting. That stuff is only useful for higher resolutions. The architecture for such are also completely different and is like comparing apples to oranges, which is why for example my card sucks for raiding. Whereas I have to cap my fps in other games or it will go into the 200+ range. It also depends on the specific card and not comparing just the default company model. The card also performed better in 2 of the 3 games benchmarked with very minimal difference in the cards to be shown. The newer 660s have significantly more core clock than the one listed as well, whereas the AMD seems to be rather the same.

My PC is a a Lightning Radeon 7970, i7 overclocked to 4.6. 16gigs of ram, Asus motherboard I believe.

 

[Battler624]

Video card memory, pixel rate, ..etc is irrelevant for botting. That stuff is only useful for higher resolutions. The architecture for such are also completely different and is like comparing apples to oranges, which is why for example my card sucks for raiding. Whereas I have to cap my fps in other games or it will go into the 200+ range. It also depends on the specific card and not comparing just the default company model. The card also performed better in 2 of the 3 games benchmarked with very minimal difference in the cards to be shown. The newer 660s have significantly more core clock than the one listed as well, whereas the AMD seems to be rather the same.

My PC is a a Lightning Radeon 7970, i7 overclocked to 4.6. 16gigs of ram, Asus motherboard I believe.

i like the "i believe" at the end.

while i agree with you on the most part WoW the 7970 was using the beta drivers "i know the test i am keen on tomshardware " in the 13.5 it took quite the job same for the Titan on 320.19 "i believe " but with the 660 not gaining any more performance from driver updates and the AMD cards getting all kind of bugs fixed "and they did for the most part" the 7870 for this time performs better "unless they release a driver update which will make it fail, typical of AMD"

 

[xmdsx]

Anyhoo, regardless of the GPU and it's power, that's fairly irrelevant as the machine will be used to open 8+ instances of wow at a time. The key point I guess I have learned is Not look for power in lots of cores and ghz, but a quality core that performs well. Battle mentioned the intel based and OC'ing to get to where I want to be, and I did not know you could OC from 3.6 to 4.8, that's amazing. My build has a budget of $700-$1000, and the purpose of the machine is to run both many instances of wow and honorbuddy, which both take alot of resources, so this is why I wanted a higher end memory as well as a higher end cpu, and to save money, went with an idea of a 560 or similar, just to get the job done in terms of graphics. The machine will also be on many hours every day, so longevity and stability is also critical.

 

[Battler624]

Regardless, "my last post before i go to sleep hopefully' if you wish you push the budget upto 1072$ and you'll get a better GPU and motherboard

Intel Core i5-4670K, Zotac GeForce GTX 770, Rosewill Blackbone - System Build - PCPartPicker

Or go for the i7-4770K for better performance probably the best out there.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($279.99 @ Microcenter)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H60 54.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($49.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock Z87 Extreme4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($104.99 @ Best Buy)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($74.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 770 4GB Video Card ($445.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Rosewill REDBONE U3 ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Rosewill Stallion 500W ATX12V Power Supply ($40.00 @ Newegg)
Total: $1183.92
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-08-10 01:39 EDT-0400)

 

[xmdsx]

The GPU is fairly irrelevant. The main concern is with memory and cpu, and how fast they are. I need to be able to run 10 wow's and 10 hb's comfortably and still be able to do other things without bogging down the wow's or hb's. I was thinking have a more stripped build where I go for maximum cpu and memory potential and scrap the gpu for my current 440gt, since this rig is geared toward farming gold rather then playing or multiboxing. I could also use things like my old hard drive etc and have more money available for a better cpu, memory, and motherboard.

 

[Battler624]

The GPU is fairly irrelevant. The main concern is with memory and cpu, and how fast they are. I need to be able to run 10 wow's and 10 hb's comfortably and still be able to do other things without bogging down the wow's or hb's. I was thinking have a more stripped build where I go for maximum cpu and memory potential and scrap the gpu for my current 440gt, since this rig is geared toward farming gold rather then playing or multiboxing. I could also use things like my old hard drive etc and have more money available for a better cpu, memory, and motherboard.

if thats what you want then gimme a sec "not my last post it seems"

 

[Battler624]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($279.99 @ Microcenter)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H60 54.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($49.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock Z87 Extreme4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($114.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Momentus XT 750GB 2.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($116.48 @ Mac Mall)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 660 Ti 3GB Video Card ($230.91 @ Newegg)
Case: Rosewill REDBONE U3 ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Rosewill Stallion 500W ATX12V Power Supply ($40.00 @ Newegg)
Total: $1020.33
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-08-10 01:56 EDT-0400)


------------

what i have done is change the RAM into a faster one, CPU into i7, GPU into 660 TI 3GB, Case with USB 3.0 support "for more compatibility with the motherboard" and the best is changing the HDD into SSHD "a hybrid HDD,SSD"

 

[xmdsx]

Pretty good build to go on here. This monster could run a good amount of instances of wow and hb. I'm just worried the framerate is going to drop at 12 clients for some reason x.x Also out of my budget range. I promised myself I would spend less then $1000

 

[xmdsx]

BUMP: Currently have this in mind, wanting to buy this but wanted to get another opinion before I commit.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($219.00 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H50 57.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($44.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI B85-G41 PC Mate ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($78.24 @ Amazon)
Memory: Kingston HyperX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($140.74 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($85.98 @ Outlet PC)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB Video Card ($243.98 @ Newegg)
Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy SE 24-bit 96 KHz Sound Card ($19.99 @ Newegg)
Wireless Network Adapter: Rosewill RNX-N150PCe 802.11b/g/n PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter ($9.99 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT Tempest 210 ATX Mid Tower Case ($54.99 @ Best Buy)
Case Fan: Apevia CF12S 63.9 CFM 120mm Fan ($5.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Apevia CF14S-BK 59.6 CFM 140mm Fan ($6.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Kingwin 650W ATX / BTX Power Supply ($34.99 @ Microcenter)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $960.86

EDIT: Found the GeForce GTX 660 Ti 3GB for the same price. Going with that instead =D