World of Warcraft Legion

[Marrgon]

Hi

I've been reading around all day looking for what specs a laptop needs to run WoW Legion on high detail. I'd really welcome some feedback in regards to which laptop builds from PC Specialist will do the job for me. We've just packed up our desktops we got from PC Specialist a few years ago, we no longer have room for them, they are outdated, this got me reading about WoW and it's recaptured my interest.

I've seen mixed reviews on HD intel, don't really understand if I need SSD, a little lost!

Many thanks

 

[Oussebon]

There's a recent discussion on a WoW build here actually: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/foru...ld-of-warcraft&p=384451&viewfull=1#post384451

You will want a CPU with the best single-threaded performance you can get your hands on (i.e. an Intel one) and a capable graphics card. Storage speed doesn't matter for FPS, so while an SSD is a nice to have and can make things load much faster, it's quite low down the shopping list.

What's your budget? And:

to which laptop builds ... We've just packed up our desktops we got from PC Specialist a few years ago, we no longer have room for them

Have you considered Mini ITX PCs:
https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/intel-sff-gaming/
The main reasons being that a) laptops are far more expensive, and b) you can upgrade things in small form factor PCs whereas when your laptop struggles to play games at desired settings, you get to buy a new laptop.

 

[Marrgon]

Thank you

Some interesting points, not really thought of a budget, I suppose less than 1k. Mini ITX is very tempting indeed.

A laptop would let me sit in living room when Mrs wants to watch TV..

 

[Oussebon]

You should check out the Optimus VIII:

Chassis & Display
Optimus Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor 7700HQ (2.8GHz, 3.8GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
8GB Kingston SODIMM DDR4 2133MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti - 4.0GB GDDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1[SUP]st[/SUP] Hard Disk
1TB SLIM SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 128MB CACHE (5,400rpm)
M.2 SSD Drive
250GB WD BLUE™ M.2 SSD (up to 540MB/s R | 500MB/s W)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
AC Adaptor
1 x 120W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Def. Audio + SoundBlaster™ Cinema 3
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8265 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) +BT 4.0
USB Options
1 x USB 3.0 PORT (Type C) + 2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Battery
Cosmos VI Series 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
Keyboard Language
SINGLE COLOUR BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)


Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1MP HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 9 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,027.00 including VAT and delivery.

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/optimusVIII-15/fcxju9rm7t/

You could drop the i7 for the i5 (or drop the SSD) to wrestle it under £1000.

The CPU is fairly important for WoW. While WoW gains no real benefit from an i7's hyperthreading capability afaik, the i7 is a bit faster regardless of HT and this may help (perhaps particularly for raids, world bosses, or if you crank the view distance). However, the cost increase is fairly significantly for ~300MHz.

The SSD should have no bearing on your framerate. It makes things load faster, but shouldn't matter in dungeons, raids, and so on as far as I'm aware. Plus, unlike the CPU and GPU that are soldered on and which you're stuck with, you can add an SSD yourself as a pretty easy DIY upgrade. The SSD does make Windows, programs, and any games installed there load faster however, so if your WoW interests are quite casual but you will be using the laptop quite intensively for office work, browsing, etc, you may find yourself wanting to stick with the SSD.

The GTX 1050 ti should handle Legion reasonably well. It would have handled Draenor more or less on Ultra (rough 7/10 on the Legion sliders) probably with some anti aliasing.

 

[Oussebon]

As for Mini ITX, you could get something vastly more powerful for quite a bit less e.g.


Case
SHARKOON SHARK ZONE C10 MINI-ITX GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-7600K (3.8GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® H110I-PLUS: Mini-ITX, LG1151, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM)
8GB Kingston DUAL DDR4 2133MHz (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
3GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060 - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DP
1[SUP]st[/SUP] Hard Disk
250GB WD Blue™ 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 500MB/sW)
2[SUP]nd[/SUP] Hard Disk
1TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 32MB CACHE
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 450W VS SERIES™ VS-450 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
PCS FrostFlow 40 Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
GIGABIT LAN PORT + Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi excluded on H110I-PLUS)
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 5 to 7 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £966.00 including VAT and delivery.

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/intel-sff-gaming/MAjPxa846z/

There's also the Fractal Node 202 case which is smaller, thinner, with a console-like profile, though is more expensive.

Not many websites that I know of do WoW benchmarks, probably because being an MMO it's quite hard to benchmark, but Techpowerup used to do them for Draenor:


The GTX 1050 ti is about as powerful as a GTX 960. The GTX 1060 is about as powerful as the GTX 980.
And the CPU has higher single threaded performance, which should make it a good deal better for WoW as well.

If you already own a laptop, even a very weak one, it's possible to stream the gameplay from the PC to the laptop, so that the work of running the game is done by the PC and the laptop/pc the gameplay is streamed to just displays the image. One can do this with steam games, and with certain non-steam games if you add a shortcut to them in the steam library. I just reinstalled WoW to check and it seems to work fine.

Once you'd got it all set up you wouldn't even need to have the host PC connected to a monitor.

 

[Marrgon]

Thank you for your incredibly informed responses! I think I,m sold on a PC Specialist laptop after reading everything you wrote. In an ideal world I'd probably have a man cave but not achievable with two little ones unless I convert the garage!

I'm aware that a desktop is cheaper and will do more for the money, what I'm not sure about is heat.. if I select to upgrade components how do I know if I'm just going to generate a heap of heat which will cause issues? Does PC Specialist allow for this when picking which items are in the upgrade lists?

Thanks again

 

[Oussebon]

There's a compatibility checker built into the configurator, and that also applies to the upgrade section of your account where you can buy upgrade parts direct from PCS (although there's nothing stopping you sourcing and installing upgrades from wherever you want). It has restrictions on certain CPUs for certain mini ITX cases to help avoid unmanageable heat.

The Node 202 isn't the best at cooling but should cope with a GTX 1060 (especially if you pop a couple of extra case fans in there, which the case has room for). All the others are more than fine for cooling as far as I know - I'd have no qualms about putting something like a GTX 1080 in there. The Sharkoon may benefit from an extra case fan to help manage CPU temps.