Build Guide for PC for World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft needs no introduction. This is a game that defined the MMORPG genre. If you have ever played any MMO in your life, chances are that its core inspiration was World of Warcraft.

So profound is this game that it is popular among multiple generations of gamers. Whether you are from Gen X, are a millennial or from the Gen Z, there are high chances that you must have come across this masterpiece in your gaming journey.

To see that the game not just survives, but STILL thrives since its release way back in 2004 is a testament to the incredible disruption and novelty it brought to the gaming industry.

No other game cemented the MMORPG genre as this game did. The game came about during the time when the majority of the world was still using dial up internet. And to this age of fiber lines and super fast internet, the game is still relevant.

To many of us who were fortunate enough to experience the game in its nascent stage, with all its glory, get to enjoy the pure joy of nostalgia. But as far as the current state of the game goes, with its constant content updates, it is as fresh as ever.

This article is a dedicated build guide for desktop PC for World of Warcraft. Here we will talk about the hardware requirements as well as tips and pointers  on choosing the best components for your system.

Luckily, like most popular online games, WoW does not require a high end hardware. Any good budget gaming desktop would more than suffice for this gem.

What is World of Warcraft in Brief?

To call World of Warcraft popular would be an understatement. This is the most recognizable game of the industry.

Essentially, World of Warcraft is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game or MMORPG. It is an MMO because there are hundreds of players playing simultaneously on a server that you can actively interact with and it is an RPG because you get to create and grow a character in a rich world.

The game is set in a fantasy realm known as Azeroth. This is a lore-rich world with two warring factions i.e the Alliance and the Horde consisting of multiple races all with their respective backgrounds, history, culture, traits, and classes.

The main attraction of the game lies in its scale. This is a huge game with wide ranging possibilities of things that you can do alone as well as with a group of friends.

Every single aspect of the game has an incredible depth. Whether it is the story rich quests or the deep crafting system, there are hours upon hours that you can spend on even the smallest details of the game.

The hallmark gameplay of the game includes playing with a group of friends against enemies (PvE) or against other players (PvP). Raiding, taking down bosses, clearing dungeons or fighting other players in duels, 40 vs 40 player battlegrounds are just some of the verticals that you can explore in WoW.

There is a also a deep player driven economy. Therefore, you can even spend your entire time as a trader minting money in the game and exchanging items to create the best version of your character.

Spare a Sec for a Brief Poll

The following survey will help me improve the article and will only take you about half a sec to complete. : )…

Is World of Warcraft the First MMORPG?

World of Warcarft is NOT the first MMORPG by a long shot. That title is held by Neverwinter Nights released back in 1991. However, so old is Neverwinter Nights that it wouldn’t even remotely be recognizable as a contemporary MMORPG.

In contrast to this, World of Warcraft was released in 2004, 13 years AFTER the first recognized MMORPG. In between all that time, there were plenty of other MMORPG titles many of which still exist today such as Tibia (1997), RuneScape (2001), and EveOnline (2003).

However, what World of Warcraft did was set a STANDARD unlike any other seen before in terms of the depth and breadth for the MMORPG genre.

To this day, the concepts and the gameplay mechanism introduced in WoW such as RAIDs, PvP, crafting system are still used and emulated.

Why Is the Game Still So Popular?

To this day, the game still sees millions of active players every month. There are many reason why the game still holds so much popularity:

1. Active Developers: The game has some of the pioneers of the gaming industry who listen to the community and do not shy away from making major changes to the game.
2. Decades Worth of Time Invested: For most, WoW was the first MMORPG, or perhaps even the first game of their life. They have invested tons of hours and that holds a natural attraction.
3. Nostalgia, Community, Social Platform: This is related to the previous point. There is a huge element of nostalgia and the social impact of the game. People have made long lasting friendships here. Many have even found the love of their life raiding dungeons in WoW.
4. Does Not Require a High End System: The game is highly accessible by all. This is a game that you can play on even a potato PC despite the fact that the graphics engine keeps getting updated.
5. Fresh Content: You can just never run out of content. With constant updates the game stays fresh and there is always something to do.

There have been so many expansion packs to WOW. From original World of Warcraft released back in 2004 to the 8th expansion pack the WoW: Shadowlands released in 2020, there has been consistent stream of content that has kept the game afresh.

Desktop PC for World of Warcraft Build Guide

Like most MMORPGs in general, World of Warcraft does not require a top of the line gaming PC to run it. In fact, it has some of the lightest hardware requirements of all the games out there – at least as far as the minimum requirements go.

While there have been major graphics and engine updates since the original release, the system requirements still remain quite easy.

Official World Of Warcraft System Requirement

World of Warcraft has two separate set of Minimum and Recommended system requirements. One for the retail World of Warcraft i.e the Shadowlands, and the other for the World of Warcraft Classic

World of Warcraft Shadowlands Requirements

This uses a heavier graphics engine and thus has a more robust minimum and recommended requirements.

Minimum Requirements for Shadowlands

Recommended Requirements for Shadowlands

World of Warcraft CLASSIC Requirements

World of Warcraft Classic (2018) and the The Burning Crusade Classic (2021), are recreation of the original title and the expansion pack released in 2004 and 2007 respectively.

Compared to the Shadowlands, the Classic version of WoW have a much lighter system requirements.

Minimum Requirements for Classic Version

Recommended Requirements for Classic Version

I. Choosing the Right CPU for World of Warcraft

According to the official requirements, the minimum and the recommended CPU for retail version of World of Warcraft (Shadowlands) are Intel Core i5-3450/AMD FX 8300 and the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X/Intel Core i7-6700K respectively.

For the Classic version, the CPU requirement is even lower.

I believe that there is a huge disparity between the CPUs recommended for a PC build for WoW.

Take for instance the recommended CPU for Shadowlands i.e the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X and Intel Core i7-6700K. They are profoundly different from each other in terms of performance. AMD Ryzen 7 2700X is multiple times faster than the Intel Core i7-6700K.

In all reality, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X is an outright overkill for most AAA games, let alone a light MMORPG title such as World of Warcraft.

How Many Cores Does World of Warcraft Use?

The game wasn’t initially designed to scale well with cores, however, with newer update, particularly the WoW Battle For Azeroth update 8.1, and the corresponding support for DX12 that it brought with it, the multiple core support has dramatically improved.

The following graph shows how the 8.1 update and the DX12 support improves the multicore support for WoW compared to the previous Version 8.0 (DX11).

These results were taken from this video by Hardware Number (as tested on NVIDIA 2080). I highly recommend watching the linked video for gaining a better understanding on how the core count can improve FPS on WoW.

Essentially, you can see some decent FPS improvements when comparing a quad core CPU to an octa core CPU. However, the real measurement of the CPU is NOT just the core count. The generation, single core performance and architecture of the CPU matters equally.

Take for instance, the AMD Ryzen 2200G. This is a quad core CPU that performs almost as good as the octa core AMD Ryzen 7 1700 as seen above.

With the DX12 support, however, you can see an improvement of 22%-26% in FPS compared to older WoW versions on multicore CPUs (as tested by Hardware Numbers).

So does World of Warcraft benefit from a CPU with multiple cores, yes it does. But the real question is whether the investment in a higher core count CPU would be worth it. An octa core CPU can be multiple times more expensive than a quad core CPU.

For instance, AMD Ryzen 3 2200G has a release price of $99, the Intel Core i9 9900K has an MSRP of $499 in comparison. While the FPS gain are twice as much, you have to gauge if investing 5 times more is worth it.

Single Core Performance is Still the King for Gaming Performance

Games are still designed to be heavily single core reliant. Meaning there is often a very positive correlation between FPS improvement and the single-core performance of the CPU.

Why does the AMD Ryzen 2 2200G and the AMD Ryzen 7 1700 have comparable FPS performance despite the former being a quad core and the latter being an octa core CPU? One of the primary reasons is that they both have a similar single core performance.

The following graph should help you understand this better:

You can see a correlation between better FPS and a CPU with a better single core performance.

When Streaming, a CPU with a High Core Count is Recommended

In certain situations, such as when streaming, having a higher core count CPU becomes almost a necessity. Streaming on platforms like Twitch can literally eat through your CPU core count.

Hence, if you are a pro WoW streamer, you will need as many cores as you can get especially if you stream on high quality settings.

Encoding can be taxing on your system. x264 will utilize a lot of your CPU, resulting in lower FPS. – Twitch.tv

The higher the FPS, resolution and the streaming encoder settings, the more powerful CPU with a higher core count you will need.

CPU for World of Warcraft Benchmark

Let us now look at comprehensive chart of performance score for various CPUs suitable for World of Warcraft retail edition:

I use the PassMark, and Cinbench R15 benchmarks for scoring the CPUs.

Basically, this table shows that for meeting the minimum requirements for a PC Build for World of Warcraft, even the most basic current gen CPUs such as the Intel Pentium G6400 and the AMD Athlon 3000G could work.

It is only if you are a World of Warcraft streamer who plays AND streams at 4K resolution or at more than 144 FPS at ultra high graphics would you need to look into the likes of AMD Ryzen 7 5800X or even the older AMD Ryzen 7 2700X.

For me, even the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X is more than just an overkill for World of Warcraft particularly if you only intend to play the game on your 60Hz monitor and do not intend to stream.

Here are the CPUs I would recommend for a PC for World of Warcraft.

• Ultra Budget Builds: AMD Athlon 3000G
• Budget Build: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 or the Intel Core i3 10100
• Mid Range Build: AMD Ryzen 3 3300X or equivalent
• High Performance Build: Intel Core i5-10600K, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
• Professional Streaming Build: Intel Core i7-10700K or better

II. Graphics Card for World of Warcraft PC Build

The GPU requirements for World of Warcraft range from Intel UHD 630 all the way to a powerful dedicated NVIDIA GTX 1080.

• Minimum: Intel UHD 630, NVIDIA GTX 760, AMD RX 560
• Recommended: NVIDIA GTX 1080, AMD RX Vega 64

This indicates that the game is designed to be played on a vast range of PC builds. If you are on a budget, you could settle for low graphics and low res GPU for your PC for World of Warcraft.

If you are an enthusiast and want to play on high graphics, 4k resolution or at more than 144 FPS, then you would certainly benefit from a beefier GPU.

For the majority of the WoW players, the NVIDIA GTX 1080 would be an overkill.

Can You Play World of Warcraft on an Integrated GPU Like an Intel HD Graphics Card?

The minimum requirements of the game certainly point to the fact that the retail game i.e World of Warcraft Shadowlands can work on the likes of Intel UHD 630 released in 2017.

I am going to test this myself. The following test is done on a system with Intel Core i7-7700HQ, and 16 GB DDR4 RAM

Testing WoW Shadowlands on Intel UHD 630 Integrated Graphics

720P (Quality Preset 1): 54 FPS

At 720P, quality preset 1, I was able to get excellent frame rates. The game was able to maintain near 60 FPS on an Intel UHD 630 on these settings.

1080P (Quality Preset 1): 30 FPS

At 1080P, quality preset 1, the game was still playable at about 30 FPS. But the graphics card was clearly being pushed to its limit.

Conclusion: The game can certainly be played on an integrated graphics card like the Intel UHD 630, given that you keep the quality settings to a bear minimum.

Playing the Wow Shadowlads on a Mid Range NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti

The mid range GTX 1050Ti (Mobile) can easily support the WoW Shadowlands at 55-64 FPS at ultra graphics on a quad core and eight thread Intel Core i7-7700HQ CPU.

The following are the results.

Testing at 1080P – 100% resolution, ultra graphics: 55 FPS

Testing at 4k – 100% resolution, ultra graphics: 20 FPS

I also tested the game at 4K resolution, ultra graphics, 100% resolution but the results were abysmal to say the least. The GPU good could barely maintain 20 FPS on 1050Ti:

Conclusion: For playing at 1080P Ultra settings, GTX 1050Ti (mobile) or equivalent dedicated GPU would do just fine.

G3D Mark Benchmark for GPU for World of Warcraft

The following table should help indicate where your selected GPU stands in terms of performance. The results were taken from G3D Benchmark.

• Test scores may differ depending upon what CPU you have.

You can see from the table above that for an average gamer, a mid-range graphics card such as the NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti is more than sufficient to have a stable gameplay at high-ultra graphic, 1080P resolution and 60 FPS.

It is only if you want to play the game at 1440P, 4k resolution or at 120 frame rates or higher would you need to look into high end or the extreme graphics cards.

And of course as tested above, the game can even play on an integrated graphics card if you are okay with playing at lowest graphics quality settings.

I believe that having the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 as the minimum graphics card in the official requirements is a bit misleading because at 1080P this GPU can certainly play the game at high graphics while maintaining 60FPS.

Does World of Warcraft Support Ray Tracing?

Yes, World of Warcraft Shadowlands DOES support ray tracing.

You will need to have ray tracing capable dedicated graphics card from the NVIDIA RTX 2000 series (or newer) or AMD 6000 series GPUs (or newer) to enjoy the ray tracing elements in World of Warcraft Shadowlands.

Does WoW Support SLI or Crossfire?

WoW does not actively support SLI or Crossfire.

However, with tests done by various users, the game does benefit from SLI or Crossfire configuration. NVIDIA often releases new and improved SLI profiles for World of Warcraft .

However, since this is not officially supported by the game, there can be certain hiccups. For instance, in the recent times there are issues with support for SLI on systems running DX12.

III. RAM Requirements for WoW

The game’s official requirements suggest 4 GB RAM as the minimum and 8 GB RAM as the recommended requirement for a PC for World of Warcraft.

In reality, most of the modern gaming PC builds, even the cheapest ones possible, feature at least 8 GB DDR4 RAM. Therefore, it is hard not to meet the recommended requirements of the game.

How Much RAM Does World of Warcraft Actually Use?

According to my tests, when running the game on NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti (4GB) Graphics card, the game was utilizing about 2.5 GB of my system memory.

Yes, it is worth noting that the overall system memory being used by my PC was 59% of 16 GB (total RAM).

That amounts to about 9.5 GB DDR RAM being used by entire system while the game was running. That is because of the fact that I have plenty of background services running as well.

I have mentioned this before, but essentially, you should have sufficient RAM to support both the game as well as the rest of the essential apps and services running on your PC.

You do not want the memory usage to reach 100% saturation as that could result in stutters and lags in your game. If you are experiencing this, then you must close of as many background applications as you can particularly the Internet browsers.

How Much RAM Does World of Warcraft Use with Intel UHD 630?

The game would naturally utilize more RAM if running on an integrated graphics card like an Intel UHD 630 because it relies on the system memory.

What Kind of Specs to Look for?

Unless you are an enthusiast with a huge budget to spare for your PC for World of Warcraft, you would want to stick to the basic RAM specs.

A decent DDR4 RAM stick has an average frequency in the range of 2400 to 3000 MHz. However, high performance RAM sticks can feature 4000 MHz or higher frequencies as well.

However, the higher the RAM frequency the more expensive it is. In addition to that, not all motherboards support high frequency RAM sticks. Most budget motherboards, such as those featuring the Intel H510 chipset, support RAM with frequencies of only upto 3000 MHz.

Another important RAM characteristic is the CAS latency. An average DDR4 RAM has a CAS latency of about 16-18. The lower the CAS latency, the more expensive the RAM is.

IV. Hard Drive for World of Warcraft Build

The game requirements recommend having 100 GB of free space. It also recommends having an SSD over an HDD.

Now there are obvious benefits to using an Solid State Drive (SSD) over Hard Disk Drive (HDD). However, the benefits would mostly be limited to the rest of your experience on your PC and NOT on the game itself.

In other words, the type of hard drive you have, would not affect the game performance. Why? That is because like all programs and games, once they are loaded, they utilize the RAM as the storage instead of the hard drive.

SSD vs HDD

When given a choice, I always recommend having an SSD for your next PC build. A good Gen 3 NVMe SSD can still cost about 4 times as much as an HDD. Meaning a Gen 3 500GB NVMe SSD can cost as much as a 2TB HDD.

But if you value higher performance than higher storage capacity, then SSDs are the way to go.

It should be noted that there are types of SSD as well the following tables highlights this:

• Gen 3 NVMe SSD uses the PCIe 3.0 interface, while Gen 4 NVMe uses the PCIe 4.0 interface.

Also Read: How many PCIe Lanes Does M.2 Slot Use?

SATA SSDs are not recommended. They connect to the SATA slots, which are found in abundance on any PC, but they are almost as expensive as NVMe SSDs. Yet, they only have a fraction of the performance of the NVMe SSDs.

NVMe SSDs, on the other hand, use the much faster PCIe interface.

Image: Seagate 3TB BarraCuda SATA vs Samsung SSD 850 EVO vs Samsung 970 EVO NVMe Source/Credit: Jollibeee86 Reddit

Essentially, the higher the transfer speed of your hard drive, the faster would be your experience on your PC. From booting to installing and to opening apps, everything will be done at lighting fast speeds on NVMe SSDs.

Also Read: What Are PCIe Lanes?

V. The Right Motherboard for WoW Gaming PC Build

When choosing a motherboard for any PC build, you should aim to have a parity in mind between the motherboard and the CPU.

In other words, you should avoid pairing an entry level CPU with a high end motherboard and vice versa.

More powerful CPUs should ideally be paired with high end motherboards because they have better voltage control, offer overclocking and have features that can allow you to utilize the max potential of your CPU.

Motherboard Chipsets

The chipset of the motherboard basically determines what specs and features it would offer.

Both Intel and AMD have entry level, mid range and high-end chipsets for consumer grade PCs.

AMD Chipsets:

Intel Chipsets

The chipset, among other things, determines the following:

• The CPU Socket: i.e AM4, LGA1151, LGA1200
• How Many PCIe lanes it would have
• How Many PCIe slots and M.2 slots it would have
• The PCIe version
• Size and number of VRMs (more robust VRMs are recommended for more powerful CPUs).
• Whether it supports CPU overclocking or not
• Amount and version of SATA and USB slots
• Support for Multiple GPU or Not
• Sound card quality

Also Read: Why is a Motherboard Important?

Motherboards I Would Recommended for World of Warcraft Gaming PC Build

There are different categories of motherboards that I would recommend for a PC for World of Warcraft depending upon your budget and the choice of CPU.

The following should serve as a rough guidelines.

Ultra Budget Build

Budget Build for WoW

Mid Range PC for World of Warcraft

High Performance Gaming PC Build for WoW

More Gaming Build Guides

• PC for Rocket League
• PC for Roblox
• PC for Minecraft
• PC for League of Legends
• PC Without Graphics Card
• PC For Fortnite

More Work Build Guide

• Budget Desktop for Video Editing