Guild Wars 2

How well would this setup run GW2?

Processor: Core i5-3550PCore
RAM: 4GB DDR3 @ 1600 MHz
Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 650 1GB
Motherboard: ASRock B75M-ITX
Drive: 500GB
Revolt mini-tower gaming case

I’d like to be able to get a good idea of the fps I’ll be getting if possible. I’d like to be able to run the game on medium to high settings at all times. I primarily enjoy PvE, but I’ll do WvW once in a while. This setup is really ideal for me size wise, as I can just set it next to my tv, hook it up to my tv, configure GW2 to use my dullshock 3 controller, and go to town. I’m a little tight on space and the size of this setup would be a great help.

if your going to get an i5, dont get less then an K series, if you want smooth play you want 4.4+ghz out of it(smooth being barely drops below 30fps)

also, I would recommend at least 8gb ram other then that its not bad.

WvW will strugle, pritty much any CPU, aside from Top End AMD’s like the FX 8350+OC, and Intel CPU’s like the 3570k+OC and 3770k+OC, will end up chugging along at 20 or so FPS in big battles.
PvE wise the CPU is fine.

Graphics wise a 650 non ti will likely handle medium only if u want consistant high fps.
You will also want 8GB RAm ..4 is on the low side nowerdays.

This a prebuilt ?
If so then ur unlikely to be able to find everything u want in one so go with it if its all u can get.

If u can build one urself or customize options of ap rebuilt then u can easily build a small rig size wise and have really good gear inside it. LAN gamers have proper high end rigs packed tightly inside cases small enough for them to carry in their travel bags..so its perfectly possible.

Yes Its a pre-built pc. If I changed the processor, video card, and ram to an i5 3570, Geforce GTX 650 Ti 2Gb, and 8Gb of ram the price comes out to $792, or I can upgrade the processor to a 3570k and the total comes to $812. I wanted to keep it around $750, but if the extra $70 helps out that much I’m fine spending it, but I dont really want to spend anymore then that.

I’m primarily a console gamer, and the 2 most demanding games I’ll be playing on it will be GW2 and the DayZ standalone. Other then that its just old nostalgic games like simcopter, xcom enforcer, age of mythology, morrowind, etc so I dont have a need for a $1000+ pc. Also, for $24 the processor comes with intel performance tuning protection, what is this and is it worth the extra $24?

My WvW style is more or less avoiding the large scale battles like castle sieges and such and going for smaller targets like smal groups of enemy players, camps, and so on. The laptop I was using ran GW2 at a frame rate of 15-20 fps so WvW was never an option for me unless I was on a friend’s pc.

Thank you to everybody in advance for the hell.

you could look at building your own small box, since I kinda doubt that they will have much in the way of OC options in an OEM system.

DayZ just to note would run better on an 8350 from AMD then 3570k, on the other hand gw2 would run better on the intel.

not sure if this is small enough for your needs but a concept idea for an matx build http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Dqzo

a 7870xt would be better, but it would cost a good bit more.

but, if your gonna use it for media, the 2tb hdd will be a godsend, its also got plenty of ram for you to use fancycache to give your hdd an 4-8gb cache to speed things up(specially arma2/dayz, it really needs caching…)

SN could give you a similar build with intel im sure…..

Now on the other hand, I would spend a bit more, the a HAF-XB case and asrock 970 extreme4 or a 990fx extreme4 motherboard wise, I used this case for a friends media center/htpc that he also uses to play games on his 46" hdtv….he loves it(similar to the build i linked but extreme4 board, 32gb ram, and he sprung for dual 7870’s)

I thought about buying the parts, but I have no idea how to build one, I’d have to pay somebody to build it and that could cost $50-$100, and I’d have to buy windows 7 or 8 which isnt cheap.

If I got it pre-built it would come with windows, put together, and have a warranty. I have really concidered buying parts and having it built, but that could cost an extra $200-$300 after I bought windows and paid the person.

Here’s an updated list of everything in the pre-built I’m looking at.

Case: iBUYPOWER Revolt Mini Tower Gaming Case
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-3570K Processor (4x 3.40GHz/6MB L3 Cache)
Processor Cooling: Certified CPU Fan and Heatsink (Revolt)
Memory: 8 GB [4 GB X2] DDR3-1600 Memory Module
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti – 2GB
Motherboard: ASRock B75M-ITX
Power Supply: 350 Watt – FSP 1U 80 Plus Certificated Power Supply
Primary Hard Drive: 500 GB HARD DRIVE — 16M Cache, 7200 RPM, 6.0Gb/s
Internal Wifi adaptor: 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi + Bluetooth Combo [Revolt B75]
Operating SystemWindows 8 + Office 2010 Trial [Free 60-Day !!!] – 64-bit
Cheap keyboard and mouse

The total is $842, and it comes with a 3 year warranty. More then the $750-$800 I wantedt spend, but I added what you guys suggested and if it makes all the difference in performance I’ll spend the extra $50. I’ll definately keep that list of parts handy too and start asking around, maybe I can find somebody reliable to build it for me.

check cyberpowerpc as well.

building is easy, honestly, its sort of like lego’s for adults.

watch that its really not hard, and most computer parts come with their own warr(1-3 years is average some have 5 years.)

if my buddy george can build a system, anybody can do it(hes a nice guy but…..not that bright….the good side, he knows hes not to bright….lol)

I had looked at cyberpower, but saw the Revolt on ibuypower and got really Interested in that, I’ll check cyberpower again and see what they have. I’ll watch that video too. Is the updated parts list I got good enough for a good fps at medium.

Update:
Looked at cyberpower and found this
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/LAN_Party_EVO_Ultra/

Changed the case to the coolmaster HAF XB with a removable motherboard tray, and the fan to the coolmaster hyper 212. Came out to $849

Both the pre-built pc’s are roughly the same price now, but I don’t know which is better.

the psu is a bit under powered, the cpu will need overclocked, you really could do better building yourself, but it would play the game, just avoid DE’s and WvWvW

For 800$ u could be getting a FX 8320 and a powerfull Hd7870xt, CyberpowerPC sucks, my recomendation would be the next: find a friend who can help u build the system and build it yourself it is 2/3h of work tops, or just watch some video tutorials in youtube, read a little about it, it is not big deal.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/DzB3
Better processor, videocard, mobo, power supply, overall WAY better system for the same price this is a respectable 800$ rig. This will play any game on the market at 60+FPS in high settings, u will be ablt to overclock the CPU up to 4.5ghz on that mobo with that power supply and that cooler will keep it under 45c no matter what.
So do yourself a favor and build it yourself please u won’t regret it and i will give u personal satisfaction, for same money this rig will smoke those u linked.
Note: since u use a pad to play i didn not add keyboard and mouse, but generic stuff will cost below 20$ and decent gaming class mouse keyboard arround 100$.
I could also make u an intel build for arround 75$+, i don’t think it worth it but it will certanlly play GW2 a bit better than AMD does, if that is a concern or for the same price cheaping out a little on the videocard and PSU which again don’t think is worth it.

What if I changed the cpu to an amd fx 8320 and the power supply to the 600 watt from crossair?

cyberpowerpc are ok rampage, if you dont wana built yourself, let me head over to cyberpower and give you a list of changes I would make…..also, if you wana save some money get the nzxt case thats cheap its a nice case and saves you 100bucks

change to the green nzxt case
CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.50 GHz Six-Core AM3+ CPU 6MB L2 Cache & Turbo Core Technology 54]
HDD: 2TB (2TBx1) SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 64MB Cache 7200RPM HDD [0] (Single Drive)
MEMORY: 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3/1600MHz Dual Channel Memory 39] (Corsair or Major Brand)
MOTHERBOARD: [CrossFireX/SLI] ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional AMD 990FX Chipset DDR3 Socket AM3 ATX w/ F-stream, UEFI, & 7.1 THX TruStudio Audio, eSATA, Dual GbLAN, 3 Gen2 PCIe X16, 2 PCIe X1 & 2 PCI 110]
SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
VIDEO: AMD Radeon HD 7770 1GB 16X PCIe 3.0 Video Card [36] (Major Brand Powered by AMD)

but for the money that will cost you, you can build your own system thats better in every way.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/DzSo

thats a videocard thats over 2x as fast, motherboard thats just as good as the cyberpower one i linked, a better psu, kitten nice case(that you will want to add fans to) 2x the memory and an 8core cpu that will easily clock to 4.5+ with that cooler.

you could spurge and get the haf-xb case(its full atx)
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/DzU5

that would up the price a good bit, but its a kitten nice case….(built a buddy a system with one a while back…..VERY NICE, the nzxt isnt as fancy but its also a kitten nice case for the price.

again this is up to you but, Honestly for your money, I would build my own system.

Well, I do REALLY like that haf xb case hahaha. I am completely open to building my own and theres a friend of a friend, and one other person I know that said they would help me build it and show me how so that’ll work. If I can get a good solid pc for around $800 (haf xb case would be nice too) I’ll take that route. I cant pm you back jazhara, told me something about spam and said I need to wait 2 days before I can.

I sugest u build one urself tbh.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/DADu

Now i presumed u needed a HDD and optical drive since it seems like u dont have an old one to salvage. Anyway this rig will play GW2 very well with settings at a mixture of medium and high. WvW wont be problem aslong as u OC the CPU, the cooler in the list can handle a good OC so u just need to setup the OC itself which u can find guides on online.
The case isnt the smallest in the world but its got brilliant cooling/airflow. you can go smaller but for a good quality small box u tend to pay more.. like the Lian-Li cases nearly all r in the region of $100 or more.

What if I dont want to oc? I’m fine with running it on low for WvW since I wont be doung it nearly as often as PvE.

SN he wants the HAF XB for case, if you havent seen it, its a full atx cube case, really nice.

and no problem EQuake, I know how stupid some of the rules can be….since you want the haf, let me see what i can do for you as an amd option, since SN got you an intel option(tho he prob needs to tweak it to allow for the HAFXB)

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/DD21

biggest change i would make to teh above is get the kingwin from my other link, this system with 1 videocard and overclocked to 4.6ghz will need

min 384watt
recommended 434watt

dual 7850’s will need

min 466watt
recommended 516watt

and overclocking this build will be kitten easy, so easy a kitten could do it

Jazhara Knightmage.4389:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/DD21

biggest change i would make to teh above is get the kingwin from my other link, this system with 1 videocard and overclocked to 4.6ghz will need

min 384watt
recommended 434watt

dual 7850’s will need

min 466watt
recommended 516watt

and overclocking this build will be kitten easy, so easy a kitten could do it

IF u plan to overclock the FX 8350 is totally ovekill, the 8320 will offer exact same performance, also u will need at least 600w PSU for 1 card and 700/750w for 2 cards to have some decent headroom for futher case/upgrades and PSU over time degradation.

What if we changed the storage to 750gb or 1 Tb?

@the op, go with the 3570k it is more than enough for gaming and is quite abit faster than the FX8350 in GW2 in WvW and I would say looking at most of the Arma 2 benchmarks I can find it seemes to be faster so would guess it should be faster in DayZ aswell.

And as far as the GPU gose go for the 7850 you can pick them up for the same price as the 650ti and there quite abit faster.

@ Jazhara Knightmage.4389, Ok you called me a fanboi the other day just beacuase i disagreed with you? afew people have had bad experinces with heat on there Ivybridge CPU’s but for the most part people are perfectly happy with them and dont have any real probblems with temps or overclocking most will do around 4.5/4.6 on a good cooler yes I know that is lower than alot of Sandy’s will do but on avarage perfomance is roughly the same @4.6 compared to a sandy @4.8/4.9, And I addmitted the tim wasant the best aswell but even crap tim should be good for around 4 or 5 years.

If anything I would prafer an AMD CPU I reamber the good old days when the FX range where the best I had an FX57 in my PC and it compleatly owned all my freinds Pentium 4’s then I upgaded to a Opteron 185/FX60 later on, but the perfomance in lots of games just isant there with Bulldozer/Piledriver, yes I know they beat intel in the odd game like BF3 supports upto 6 threads ect, and lots more games you wouldant notice the differance unless you where benchmarking.

But there are still quite afew that you would like Shogun 2 when there are massive battles i.e thousands of troops on screen kicking the crap out of each other, WoW in 25 man boss fights some of them can be pretty CPU intensive, GW2, Starcraft 2 where even overclocked it strugles to keep up with an i5/i7 at stock.

And don’t get me wrong I am not saying Bulldozer/Piledriver are bad chips far from it in fact especially Piledriver but if your main thing is gaming then the i5/i7 are currently the best opption that might change over the next couple of years with the new consoles both being 8 core AMD CPU’s more games will be designed with mulltithreading in mind and I have no doubt that that the 8350 will be beating the Sandy/Ivy i5/i7 in alot more benchmarks, but by then both Intel and AMD will have new CPU’s out anyway.

Brem.6792:

@the op, go with the 3570k it is more than enough for gaming and is quite abit faster than the FX8350 in GW2 in WvW and I would say looking at most of the Arma 2 benchmarks I can find it seemes to be faster so would guess it should be faster in DayZ aswell.

And as far as the GPU gose go for the 7850 you can pick them up for the same price as the 650ti and there quite abit faster.

@ Jazhara Knightmage.4389, Ok you called me a fanboi the other day just beacuase i disagreed with you? afew people have had bad experinces with heat on there Ivybridge CPU’s but for the most part people are perfectly happy with them and dont have any real probblems with temps or overclocking most will do around 4.5/4.6 on a good cooler yes I know that is lower than alot of Sandy’s will do but on avarage perfomance is roughly the same @4.6 compared to a sandy @4.8/4.9, And I addmitted the tim wasant the best aswell but even crap tim should be good for around 4 or 5 years.

If anything I would prafer an AMD CPU I reamber the good old days when the FX range where the best I had an FX57 in my PC and it compleatly owned all my freinds Pentium 4’s then I upgaded to a Opteron 185/FX60 later on, but the perfomance in lots of games just isant there with Bulldozer/Piledriver, yes I know they beat intel in the odd game like BF3 supports upto 6 threads ect, and lots more games you wouldant notice the differance unless you where benchmarking.

But there are still quite afew that you would like Shogun 2 when there are massive battles i.e thousands of troops on screen kicking the crap out of each other, WoW in 25 man boss fights some of them can be pretty CPU intensive, GW2, Starcraft 2 where even overclocked it strugles to keep up with an i5/i7 at stock.

And don’t get me wrong I am not saying Bulldozer/Piledriver are bad chips far from it in fact especially Piledriver but if your main thing is gaming then the i5/i7 are currently the best opption that might change over the next couple of years with the new consoles both being 8 core AMD CPU’s more games will be designed with mulltithreading in mind and I have no doubt that that the 8350 will be beating the Sandy/Ivy i5/i7 in alot more benchmarks, but by then both Intel and AMD will have new CPU’s out anyway.

The fact is my friend a fx 8350 is a lot more powerfull than any i5 and is cheaper, only reason intel performs better in some games is because they use ancient dual core designed game engines. With new consles going out soon featuring multicore desings, games will become more multithreaded whcih favors AMD cpus. Intel is fast in core performance but tecnology isn’t going that way anymore since pentium 4 died, only reasson intel still performs better in “modern games” is because they are desinged to be compatible with 7y old ancient console tecnology nothing more.
In any real modern game AMD CPUs would outperform intel at their price range. So recomending i5s over FX 8 core is only wise if u plan to play Dx9 games for the next few years.
I don’t call ppl who says i5s or i3s are better than FX series to be fanboys they are just ignorant. The fact is games will become more and more multithreaded in the future old dx9 titles will be in the past, in 2013/2014 with tons of titles using decent modern engines like Unreal engine 4, crytek engine 3, frostbyte 2 and 3, consoles game ports threaded for 8 cores, it would be just silly buy a 4 core CPU over a 8 core for the same price. FUTURE IS NOW!
U don’t really wana buy expensive CPUs for gaming, since next year 200$ CPU will outperform current 1000$, u just want to keep ur system up to date and AMD offers much more of that, offers upgradability and ultra cheap prices so u can constantly keep up with tech expending minimum amounts of money.

EQuake.3456:

What if we changed the storage to 750gb or 1 Tb?

You can do that if you want. But try to pick 7200 rpm or more. If you don’t have an ssd who can serve as cache, a 5200 rpm hard drive will slow you down like hell (So best is a serial ATA 6Gb/s) I have 2 hard drives of seagate barracuda (1Tb and 2Tb). Pretty nice stuff. And both have 64 Mb cache. For me, having 2Tb under the 90€ is pretty nice. Maybe not the cheapest, but they are reliable, and last longer.

As I said in acouple of years the Fx8350 will be faster in most games but as it stands now the i5/i7 is still the better option beacuase lots of current games still perform quite abit better in some cases on Intel.

The way you guys have been hyping it up you would think Piledriver stomps all over Intel but it dosent stomp all over it, it’s not bad and in things like encoding it keeps up with and sometimes beats the i7 for alot cheaper which is where it really shines, but for gaming you can pick up a 3570k and a decent mid priced Z77 board for not much more than a 8350 and a decent 900 AM3+ board, which is where the 3570k really shines.

Telling people to upgrade to a CPU or a GPU that is slower in the games they play when they can get something for around the same price or slightly more that will be fast enough to tell the differance that is ignorant, in GW2 Intel in WvW is quite abit faster the OP plays DayZ not played it myself but I know Arma 2 is allso quite abit faster on Intel so taking a guess that DayZ will be aswell. If the guy did alot of encoding aswell then yeah the FX8350 would probbably be a better option.

I know you say overclock it to 4.5/4.6ghz but you can do that just as easy with the intel CPU’s and get an even bigger boost in perfomance that you would from overclocking the FX chips.

And yes I said it was faster in BF3 and I dont think there is much in ti in Crysis 2/3 either but then if you look at the differance the FX 8 core chips and the i7 don’t beat the i5 by much, but then if you look at big WvW battles in GW2 or some of the 25 manboss fights in WoW or games like Shogun 2 or Starcraft 2 when you have massive battles going on the i5 is quite abit faster than the FX8350, which is why I say it is still the best choice for gaming you can argue that it is beacuase of crappy game engine’s ect this is mostly true but it still dosent change the fact as an overall gaming chip the i5 is worth the extra few quid dollars euro’s.

Well mind you guys I’m perfectly fine with medium on PvE and low on WvW, I’d even take low all around if need be. I played it for abouy a month after it came out before the laptop crashed (I got the CE too) and I played it on low with an fps of 15-20, so even a higher fps on low would be alright by me. Like I said, I dont need a super gaming machine. To be honest ive seen GW2 on max and I really didnt think it was vastly superior compared to low, but then again graphics aren’t something I really worry about as long as the gameplay is great and the game is fun I’m fine with it, and GW2 is great gameplay wise and I had a blast with it, even at 15 fps on low, so anything better then that is perfectly fine with me. Actually, come to think of it, when I saw GW2 on max the bushes changed color hahahaha.

Just remeremembr that your helping somebody who finished GW1 at a conistent 5-10 fps (if I was lucky) on a pc that could barely run anything on low, everything was cut like a diamond and either chrome or gold. I still had a blast with it, and I did with the low quality I had in my brief stint with GW2.

As for the DayZ standalone game, I’m not sure if its using the arma2 engine or the arma 3 engine. I’d say the arma2 engine would most likely be it, I’ll ask some guys in the closed beta of it, maybe they can tell me if it doesnt beat there non-disclosure agreement.

This pc is really only ever going to see older games and mmo’s, mainly GW1, GW2, DayZ, and maybe SWtOR now that thats F2P, but I dont forsee myself getting serious about it. Like I said, GW2 and DayZ will be the most demanding games I’ll be playing and while I’d like medium for WvW and high for PvE I’m perfectly content with low for WvW and medium for PvE, or even low all around if I have a great fps. Its gameplay > graphics for me.

EQuake.3456:

What if we changed the storage to 750gb or 1 Tb?

only saves about 20bucks thats why I went with the 2tb I picked, its 20bucks more for 2+x the space, smaller drives the price per gb ramps up pretty fast these days.

Brem.6792 actually in full arma2(not using the in game bench) the 8350 is faster then the 3570k, the in game bench disables AI and just runs a preset track around the map, this takes alot of cpu load off as well as taking off the load from the hdd streaming data, its why more and more reviewers arent using the in game tool, even the developers admit said tool is flawed and dosnt show actual in game perf.

clearly you have not used an 8350 or any modern amd chip, and thats fine, you look at a few reviews and talk out your posterior, thats not fine…..at least not to me.

the fact is, WoW 25mans run FINE on my system and systems like it, infact, as a test, i joined a friends private server where they have some custom(very hard) 30mans setup, (cant go much past 30 because the maps just really arent big enough for that many people spamming attacks)

sure you may get more fps, but when I was pegged at 60 the whole time…..what more do i need?(my monitor isnt 120hz after all)

and EQuake the system i been helping you spec out will play all of those fine, WvWvW dosnt run well for anybody, despite what Brem would have you believe, I have seen it on systems that I admit are far more powerful core for core then mine, and it didnt run noticeibly better in wvwvw….it still had vanishing players and fps drops and spikes, infact thats why the guy had me go over to his place, he thought maybe I could fix it….sadly theres no fix.

and from what I gather the standalone dayz is gonna use arma2 engine BUT they may port it over to 3 engine, either way, when you got alot of AI(zombies) moving, the 8350 deals with that better then the 3570k, mostly because, the 3570k has 4 very strong cores, where the 8350 has 8 mearly strong cores(your eally cant call them weak, if you want weak look at stuff like the atom, even the c2q is strong by compairson..lol)

Oh as to the 8320 over 8350 clearly you didnt look at the price or its changed massivly since i looked last, it was 20bucks at most last time i looked….if it was 30-40 less yeah i would say go for it but…..better to get the chip thats got the better binning if you ask me.

im headed to work will add more later.

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-fd8350frhkbox
vs
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-fd8320frhkbox

also note, they both have combos at newegg the motherboard also had combos with cpus
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-990fxextreme4
click the “show more”

you could drop down to a 8320, or 6300 to save a bit of money up front but, with the 8120 the price is so close I would rather get the chip thats been binned higher(meaning it will likely clock higher and run cooler at those higher clocks)

If equake wants to go intel, he can, SN gave him an intel option, but the downside is, hes got no upgrade path once haswel comes out, other then replacing the board….

then when broadwel comes out, replace the board and chip….

on that note
Brem.6792
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/amd-fx-8350-and-asus-sabertooth-990fx-r2-0/1434904

read that post and feel free to try and explain exactly where amd is unable to give playable fps.

yes in a few titles like skyrim it looks bad but, honestly, skyrim is a very very old engine(used for morrowind and oblivion) its not a modern engine at all…..and I have zero problems with skyrim running smoothly on my system, its another game i fps cap though, because I dont like wide verations in fps…(i can see over 100fps in it, then drop to the 40’s then back up to 100’s…..so i just cap it at 40fps with triplebuffer and it never drops below that….better then gw2 runs on an i7 X edition!!!)

and equake the setup I speced out would suit your needs fine, yes you could cut the cpu down to a 8320 or 6300 but in both cases, you will need to oc it more then you would the 8350, at current prices, I honestly feel the 8350 is a steal, you get perf that case Dependant can match our outrun a 3770k (just depends on the game/app) at the price of an intel 3450 or 3470 thats locked, you get more cores, you get lower temps.

so yeah a 3570k or 3770k@4.5 will get you a small boost in fps in gw2(at best 5-10fps and thats pushing it) but you also pay more for them, an equivalent board will cost you more, and you will have no real upgrade path once haswel comes out.

EQuake check the post i made with info above…infact i will re-add the link
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/amd-fx-8350-and-asus-sabertooth-990fx-r2-0/1434904

as that shows, yes the 8350 is being in some places, but, it always produces playable fps in real game situations, and it at times totally smokes the intel chips in its price bracket……

bf3 (check the images) shows that the 8350 isnt a bad chip.

the armaII part in that, remember this, the runs they did where not hand done runs but using the bench function, no AI was running, so, not a real game situation, in dayz(using he arma II engine) theres ALOT of AI, zombies and such that ai likes extra cores

I’m fine with the 8350 and I’ll probably go with that, but what how bad will the fps drop if I dont oc?

in basic play, you will be fine in DE’s and WvWvW you will drop into the 20’s or even teens same as with a stock 3570k

again tho, OC is EASY, these chips are made to oc, thats why they are unlocked.

you can do an “Easy oc” if you dont want to do the full oc or just arent comfortable doing it the more advanced way, mulit oc is easier then a fsb+multi oc, only disadvantage is you do loose out on a small perf bump that a mixed can give you at the same clocks.

at the very least, you will be able to get 4.3-4.4 solid at stock volts in most cases.

You dont have to oc, but for gw2, its really a smart thing to do, and again ,its not that hard AND on top of that, amd isnt gonna void your warr for doing it unless you call them and start talking about overclocking(they have never even asked me about overclocking in all the years i have been doing this…thats 20+ years, intel has asked alot….kinda makes me laugh…)

either way, IF you decide to oc, (you really should specially with that NICE case and cooler on the list) the board/chip/ram I listed will be pretty easy to do a safe oc on.

remember these chips turbo to 4.2 under heavy load anyway, so 4.6 is only a 400mhz oc…thats pretty mild/mellow honestly, if you got a friend with any building skill, most likely they know how to oc as well.

one thing i will warn you about, once you start learning to OC, it kinda becomes addictive, you will find yourself thinking “i wonder if i can overclock this smart phone” or “i wonder if i can overclock this tablet” (in most cases, the answer is yes!!!!, my touchpads nicely oc’d and much faster for it!!!)

either way, you will like the system im sure (and even if you dont oc at first, you always have that option as long as you stick with quality motherboards…the board I picked is one of the best boards for amd period…not just for clocking)

The case doesn’t come with all the fans does it? I’ll have to order more. Does the fans it comes with have thr red lights on them? If not I’ll get green or blue.

i think it comes with some of the fans, but the builds i have helped with on the xb we replaced them all with akasa vipers rather then lighted fans(they move more air and have better lifetime ratings then lighted fans)

I would replace them if they come with red anyway, not a fan of red…..

great places to get fans

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/

http://www.koolertek.com/

http://www.xoxide.com/

those are the 3 places I check first to get retail fans.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119265 that has shots of the case and a video review, again, by the time i got the cases they had the fans stripped and replaced with better quality/flow fans.

there are a few choices for fans for that case

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/cotucf12cafa.html

those have crazy long life span of 150,000hours and move decent air.

this case has 3×120mm and 2×80mm fan slots my suggestion would be

3 of these http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/akvi126928db.html

and

2 of these http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/pa80hisp.html you can find cheaper 80mm’s but panaflo’s will last vertially forever (i have some from back in the ibm/wang 8086 days that are still in active use)

none are lighted BUT if you want lights, buy a couple cold cathods of the color you want and place then where you want

the stock fans are a bit low flow honestly(always true for coolermaster cases in my exp)

its a nice little case, if your gonna use this in a room where you want to be able to turn out the lights and watch movies or sleep, I would either avoid lights OR put a switch on them so you can turn them off(i put painters tape over the hdd led’s on my system because it drives me nuts at night when i try and sleep….hehe)

sidewinder really isnt into lighted fans(in part because they dont tend to last as long as non-lighted fans, and lighted fans tend to dim over time)

http://www.koolertek.com/computer-parts/pc/80mm-Fans-c183.htm

they have lighted as do xoxide, but again, lighted fans front and back will be pretty at first, then over time they dimm and look a bit pathetic, they also drive you crazy if you wana watch movies or sleep in the same room……

Does the ccae come with all of the neccesary wires to hook the hdmi and usb ports up so they can be used?

the case will have wires to connect everything thats included in the case to the board thats not an issue, HDMI will be on the videocard, some cards come with cables some dont, if you need a cable try monoprice for quality cables cheap

Should I use the hdmi or the blue monitor jack to hook it up to my tv? I have a 42" 3D LCD tv that has the blue monitor jack on it.

use an hdmi 1.4 cable, the blue jack is most likley vga and wouldnt give you the same quality, and it also wouldnt transport sound, where the hdmi can.