Guild Wars 2

Hi, since launch I’ve been playing gw2 on a laptop (it’s not the best, as you can imagine). Ive dipped in and out of periods of playing but with the upcomimg release of HoT I have found myself on the hype train and playing every day, certainly enjoying it. With the expansion coming I don’t wish my experience to be hindered due to a lack of powerful pc. So, what I wish to do is build my own pc (my dad has done it before so I’ll have help), however my budget isn’t too high. I just want to be able to play the game on high/better graphics with 40+ fps. I have £400-500 to spend (I imagine this is around $700). Can anyone suggest the pc components I’ll need to achieve this? (Or if it’s even possible with that amount of money)
Thanks in advance

For $700US and only new parts, I’d personally be looking at this computer:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/qCRcnQ

I went a little overbudget, but it’s worth it, and if need be the GPU could drop to a 280 or 960, pretty much whichever is cheaper. I’m not sure what prices are like in the land of the GBP, but I’d aim for something like this.

If it’s grossly over (changing my list to the UK puts me at £636), I’d drop the GPU down a bit and if that’s still over I’d likely go for a locked i5 (4460?) with one of the cheap MSI boards (H81M-E33 I think).

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/GVp6t6

Maybe something like this? It’s still a bit over, though, and you’ll need to source windows yourself (it’s pretty easy to get a copy cheaply or just reuse one, at least over here). I’m really not too sure of the prices over there, like I said, but an i5+decent GPU is what you’ll want to be looking at.

Lone Wolf.3718:

Hi, since launch I’ve been playing gw2 on a laptop (it’s not the best, as you can imagine). Ive dipped in and out of periods of playing but with the upcomimg release of HoT I have found myself on the hype train and playing every day, certainly enjoying it. With the expansion coming I don’t wish my experience to be hindered due to a lack of powerful pc. So, what I wish to do is build my own pc (my dad has done it before so I’ll have help), however my budget isn’t too high. I just want to be able to play the game on high/better graphics with 40+ fps. I have £400-500 to spend (I imagine this is around $700). Can anyone suggest the pc components I’ll need to achieve this? (Or if it’s even possible with that amount of money)
Thanks in advance

I’ve just build my PC a few months back. I’m from the UK. My advice is keep an eye on Amazon. Fill out a wish list of parts, then keep an eye on them, they can go up and down a bit, but they prices can drop by £20-£30. I got my i5 4690k for £170(now £178.19), the locked i5 4690s was £180. The ram I got was £58(now £37). The MSI GTX960, I’ve seen as low as £150.(now £169.99). My motherboard is currently £39.99 which is what I payed for, the E33 is currently £33. You can get a 1TB HDD for £38. If you don’t mind getting them in bits and peace’s, Amazon is worth it. The only problem is for a good PSU and case you are looking at about another £150. Plus the OS another £80 ish. So maybe change out the GPU for a 750Ti, that will save you around £50-£60.

My advice would be to not to skimp on the CPU. As you can change the GPU, and add more ram later on when you can afford it.

Maybe look at seeing what this set up would cost you.

i5 4690(the K if you can stretch to it.)
4GB of Ram. (HyperX savage is good but you can find cheaper ram with out heat sinks)
MSI M81H-E33 (E34 if you stretch for the i54690k so you can use the smart OC that comes with that board if you want to.)
GTX 750Ti (go for a know brand, like Gigabyte, MSI)
Get a 650 watt PSU, again a known brand like seasonic, XFX, corsair.(this is so you can upgrade parts at a later date
And a good case. Your looking at between £40-£60. The Corsair spec 3 is a good case, the Spec 1 is also good.
Get a 1TB HDD if you want to save some money over a Static state drive.

I would hope all this would cost less than £500 and leave the £80 ish you’d need for an OS.

Just keep in mind the biggest performance gain is to be had from the clockspeed of the CPU (especially unlocked CPUs like the i5-4690K, i7-5820K) unless you are running Supersample or a resolution higher than 1080p. i7 Hyperthreading doesn’t help much.

I would recommend buying RAM in a two pack (4GB X2 , 8GB X2) if you get an i5-4690K due to dual channel memory.

I’d also recommend a cheaper ~250GB Crucial MX200 / Samsung 850 EVO / Samsung 840 Pro / Intel 750 / Intel 730 SSD as a boot drive and game load drive. (SSD review database http://www.johnnylucky.org/data-storage/ssd-database.html)

Make sure to buy a reliable 500W+ PSU with 80+ Bronze or better, such as a Seasonic X series / G series, Corsair AX series, or XFX (Seasonic is their OEM). PSU Review Database: http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/PSUReviewDatabase.html

Pretty much any recent midrange GPU is going to perform okay at High settings and 1080p. (GTX 970, GTX 960, GTX 950, GTX 770, GTX 760, GTX 670, GTX 660 Ti, R9 380, R7 370, R9 290, R9 280X, R9 285, R9 280, R9 270X, R9 270)

Note that the GPU number is very misleading sometimes. A bigger number doesn’t always correlate with more performance. A GTX 960 sometimes is slower than a GTX 670 or GTX 770 ; R7 370 is slower than a R9 270X.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/zVKfzy

Infusion.7149:

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/zVKfzy

16 GB of ram is a waste and that SSD puts him way over budget. Otherwise this is reasonably solid.

• The 16GB of RAM was a mistake. I only was trying to put one set of 4GBx2.

However, that is what I would build today if I was in the UK. Even if you go with a cheaper HDD you’d end up at ~ 500GBP

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/38QXrH

One advice I can give is get a powerful CPU. Guild Wars 2 is quite heavy on the CPU.

I have an i5 with over 3.2ghz and it still sounds like its about to die while the game is running.

Consider i5-6600k. Though you need a motherboard with a 170 chipset and different ram (either DDR3L or DDR4 depending on the motherboard).

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/DMyJ4D —> 580GBP using DDR4 RAM on DDR4 compatible motherboard