Guild Wars 2

Hey guys
So I’ve been playing on a 2007-08ish MacBook Pro for as long as the game has been out, and I’m kinda getting sick of it. I don’t even meet the minimum specifications to play the game. I have all my graphics settings on the lowest the can go and I get about 9-11 frames per second, and in WVW when traveling with a big group and fighting other big groups, FPS can drop to about 3ish, if not lower at times. I’m sure most of you can relate, and agree in saying that this is not fun. Not fun at all.
So I decided recently that I’d set aside some money in order to build a PC and play the game it was meant to be played – High graphics settings and 30 fps. I’m not trying to build a 2000$ MMO machine however. What I’m looking for is something that can be built for around 600$ and still be able to run the game on good settings and still get a proper amount of fps. The only problem is this – I know pretty much next to nothing when it comes to computer hardware and building computers. So I was hoping that you all on the forums could help out. I don’t need some fancy cases and an awesome water-cooling system. Just something that gets the job done. Thank you guys for any insight.

It might be kinda rough for just $600. My laptop runs max settings at $1100

Check out MaximumPC’s April build guides for some ideas on components:
http://www.maximumpc.com/build_pc_recommended_builds_april_2014

NVIDIA also has some decent do-it-yourself guides on their GeForce site (although they’re obviously biased toward Intel and NVIDIA products and don’t mention AMD alternatives). Their latest guide is for building an SLI graphics system, but if you ignore the SLI part and stick to a single graphics card the rest of the guide is still a good read (again, keeping in mind that it’s biased toward NVIDIA):

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/diy-how-to-build-an-sli-rig-part-1#1

You’re going to be hard pressed to get “high graphics settings and 30fps” on a $600 budget, especially if you need to buy a monitor too (since you’re coming from a laptop, don’t know whether you have a separate monitor).

At an absolute minimum I would recommend:

CPU: Intel Core i3 or AMD A8 series
RAM: 8GB (2 × 4GB sticks)
Graphics: GeForce GTX 750 (or whatever AMD’s equivalent is)
Power Supply: 500 watt
Hard Drive: as much as you can afford

You’re probably looking at about $700 for that and it will play comfortably at medium settings. Plus you may need to add the cost of a monitor and the operating system, which could push you over $1,000 easily.

If you know “next to nothing about computers”, does that include knowing nothing about assembling them? Because that’d make the whole thing one hell of a lot cheaper. Some websites tell you whether or not the components work together, and if not, you can build your machine, post it to a forum and get the answer there. Some shops charge for assembly, but even with that, if you hunt around a bit, you can save a lot of money as opposed to buying some pre-made machine.
The site where I bought my components actually offered free shipping and 10% off if you ordered between midnight and six am; lots of good deals to find if you know where to look.

That’s going to be tough, Ramm…

You could build a PC for 400 bucks and it can ‘play’ games, but it won’t be able to do so very smoothly and on any High/Max settings, but it would be fast for browsing the net, email, messaging, etc. heck it might even do video editing ok. It would be able to run GW2, but it won’t get good framerate. I’m sorry I don’t want to burst any bubbles of excitement, but that’s just how games like GW2 and higher quality games are. People making the HD videos on YouTube have spent over $1,000 on their systems, that’s why they can run games smoothly and on high settings.

Max’s link from Maximum PC (do you work for them? I like your mag!) is about $600, but the videocard is a GTX750Ti, which is about ‘half the videocard’ of my now-aging GTX560Ti (I bought a second one to run them in SLI, which has helped a lot since). It’s confusing, but you’ll get used to the GPU companies’ numbering system – if you are going to be moving over to PC-land.

Those two concepts you stated are sort of are at odds with each other:
- “High graphics settings and 30fps”
- “built for about $600”
You sort of have to choose between one or the other. Splurge on this one purchase (pay off the CC over time later) and be ‘set’ for a while, or budget it throwing a low ball and lower your expectations on the graphics and fps. That’s just how the companies make and price their hardware, not me trying to be mean, hehe

Guild Wars 2 sort of lets you off the hook in a way though, as it is only DirectX9-based and isn’t heavy on the GPU demand. My 2 560Ti’s barely use a third of their capacity playing GW2 (~30% GPU usage when metering it) – this game has more of a CPU bottleneck. So, that means you don’t have to break the bank for that $1,000 Titan (NVIDIA) or R9 (AMD/ATi) vidcard, since it won’t matter, as long as this game is going to be your ‘main’ game. (There are lots of recent games that are CPU-limited by the way, but I think over time it will become less so). Just spend a good chunk of your 600 samoleans on the CPU and then ride the budget out on the rest with a smaller mainboard, smaller harddrive, etc. (you don’t even need a case if you really want to push it, but for $40 you can get a box with a power supply, to power everything and then it will help keep things cooler with better airflow and less access to dust as well).

Have fun starting off your journey!

Thanks so much for all the feedback guys, it’s nice to know what to expect really. I’m going to do a bit more research and get back with what I plan on doing

Ok so I went on pcpartpicker and this is what I came up with
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3rjrM
I made this assuming that I could scavenge a hard drive and optical drive from a not used computer I have lying around
So do you think this setup could run GW2 well?
Maybe not on high graphics, but maybe like mediumish?

Yeah that build should do the job. Good choice of CPU, it’s powerful and gives you the option to overclock if needed (k version). In case you never want to overclock your CPU you could also use the non-k version which is cheaper.

You can get a decent machine with $600, but you are likely going to have to cut some corners.

I suggest an i5 quad at least.
8GB of memory
you might have to skip larger SSDs at that budget, but a set of regular HDs set for RAID 0 will give fairly good disk performance (and you can always add SSDs later and still use the HDs for storage and backup).

I use Newegg and subscribe to their newsletters and daily specials when I’m going for a system. A few months of keeping an eye on these always nets good parts at discounted prices (if you are not in a hurry to buy all the components at once).

My 2 cents. I prefer intel but AMD is cheaper on the wallet. I wouldn’t do anything less than 8 gigs of ram. Run windows 7 64 bit. For graphic cards use toms hardware website. They do benchmarks on games. You can see what kind of frames per second a card will give you. Just stick with a sata hard drive. Make sure you get a case with good fans! The bigger the monitor the higher the resolution which means you need a beefier graphics card to push that resolution.