Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

Hey all,

I've been running a 5.5 year old Gateway FX6840-03e, and for the last 5 months, I've needed to have minimum video settings and keep the side panel off of the computer while having a massive fan on full blast towards the GPU (or else my computer would crash). It's getting worse each week.

I was hoping to get input on whether the Alienware X51 R3 (2nd configuration, with a GTX 960 GPU) could run Nost on max settings. I've read somewhere that on Nost you won't even see a difference form an i3 to an i5, so an i7 is irrelevant. Same with 4 GB to 8 GB of RAM. This build is for $900, pre-taxes.

http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-x51- ... h:6~GTX960

Quick background....
I don't know anything about building a computer, and therefore would rather spend extra money to not have to do it. Please don't just respond with "build your own", I'm a finance guy, not an IT guy. I've compared this computer to the parts of PCPartpicker.com and I'm not getting killed on the pricing, as so many people seem to claim always happens with these giant computer manufacturers. I do know there are other things that go with the performance of a computer. Also, the only other computer game I play is XCOM, and hopefully soon, XCOM 2.

Thanks in advance for any input. Have a great weekend.

Um the engine was written in 2003ish so I think any old potato can run Nost on Max settings. If you're interested here are recommended system requirements for vanilla posted by Blizzard.

OS: Windows XP / Windows Vista (with latest Service Packs)
CPU: Dual-core processor, such as the Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2
RAM: 1GB
GPU: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM Such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better

trust me,You get way more value for your $$ if you build it yourself and it is a rewarding experience.

Payupsir wrote:trust me,You get way more value for your $$ if you build it yourself and it is a rewarding experience.

This was true 11 years ago. Companies lost a lot of money to this and now buy mass parts to build their own rigs with usually 1 or 2 cheap items in it to keep shelf cost down to make it appealing to the consumer. The biggest savings comes from already having an operating system included rather than having to buy one yourself.

Best bang for your buck is to find a decent priced i5, (i3 will work more than fine if you are only playing Nost) premade machine with a crappy graphics card. All you have to do is upgrade the graphics card and you have a nice computer. ** Note, if you go heavy on the graphics card, take note of the required power to push it. You may need to swap out your power supply as well. Most mid-shelf rigs come with 300w, you may need 450w if you are going with a decent GTX card. The default ram you will get will be more than enough.

As for the graphics card, you don't have to go big here if you are only playing nost. $80+ would be fine.

Like stated above, this was made in 2003. Your reported overheating issues sounds like the result of years of not properly cleaning the computer inside, and your fan is going out (while still working, probably not as fast due to dust weight over years putting too much load on it)

The PC you linked is way more than enough to run at max settings at a consistent 60FPS. Honestly about any PC you could buy now a days would run it even a cheaper entry level PC would probably suffice.

I was running retail vanilla at 60FPS on a single core 2.4gig processor with 4gigs of ram on a 7800 GTX back then.

A faster i3, Gtx 960 2 GB gpu, 8 GB fast RAM, mid range SSD: ~$800 without monitor which btw if you can get an Nvidia G sync, they are worth more than their weight in gold.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/YHVkhM