Need advice from experienced pc build savvy folks.

[Canadian Fishing Addict.6837]

Hello fellow GW2 gamers.. A couple nights ago in the middle of a meta train  my PC died so  i am in the market to buy a new pre built  pc from amazon ( Canada ).  I am not at all tech savvy and was hoping for advice on what I should be looking for in order to have a good gaming experience in gw2 and other mmorpg’s for at least a few years to come. I know enough to know I need a very good processor and a good GPU but I can’t tell what a good one is from a weak one the numbers mean nothing to me it’s all Gobblygook to me. Youtube is no help either.  I am old and lost.. plz help

editing to add more info.   My budget is around  $3000-3500  but I am  flexible i.all i want  is something that can run smoothly and lag free while zerging in WVW or  doing a meta with 100 other folks.  And can be upgraded in the future .  My old machine was really laggy at the best of times..  I mainly play GW2  wow    Ff      I am willing to pay now for something that will play well for me for a good long while before needing upgrading .

 

Edited September 23 by Canadian Fishing Addict.6837

[SandraSolace.7682]

To start, I am in now way up to date on what is out there these days. But I do know that this game is not as much about GPU as it is about CPU. I play the game (yes not full blown graphs, I just wanna play) on a laptop that will not play most games. Simply cause the power is not there. But I enjoy playing every day!

What I am tyring to say, get something you can afford if this is your game.

[EDOTDOT.9265]

I would need more information before I can start making suggestions.  What's your price range?  What were the specs on your old computer?  Were you fine with the performance?

[Gendalfs.7521]

I heard amd x3d series are awesome in mmo's

[QueenKeriti.5176]

6 hours ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

I heard amd x3d series are awesome in mmo's

^ The x3d series is great for gaming. Both the AMD 5800x3D and 7800x3D are very good.

Intel is having some crappy issues with their 13/14 series of CPUs. The 12 series isn't great but isn't bad and isn't as affected as the 13/14 series are.

But, yeah, like Edotdot said, we need more info on things like your budget + what games you're playing/want to play. Absolute bare minimum stats? 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD or 1TB NVME drive. Graphics cards are gonna depend on budget + what you're wanting to do.

[AliamRationem.5172]

I have the 7800X3D and while even that won't get you great FPS with all settings maxxed in the most demanding scenarios, it comes pretty close.  From testing on Tequatl I found all I had to do was turn character model limit/quality down and I could get 60 FPS at 1440 resolution.  Anywhere without a ton of players in combat we're looking at at least 100 FPS.  In the middle of nowhere with nobody around it's like 200-300 FPS range, depending on which part of the world I'm in.  

I think that's about as good as it gets for this game.

[Canadian Fishing Addict.6837]

40 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I have the 7800X3D and while even that won't get you great FPS with all settings maxxed in the most demanding scenarios, it comes pretty close.  From testing on Tequatl I found all I had to do was turn character model limit/quality down and I could get 60 FPS at 1440 resolution.  Anywhere without a ton of players in combat we're looking at at least 100 FPS.  In the middle of nowhere with nobody around it's like 200-300 FPS range, depending on which part of the world I'm in.  

I think that's about as good as it gets for this game.

What gpu did you pair it with?

[Chyro.1462]

Personally I'd prioritize a CPU with high single-thread performance, then go from there. With the budget you mentioned you can go pretty high-end.

Gw2 especially and lots of other (mostly older) games too don't make use of multi-threading (basically making use of multiple cores of the cpu at once) so it matters more how much a single core performs compared to having lots of lower-performance cores.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

This here lists CPU's based on their single-thread performance. Depending on preference (or other recommendations) Intel or AMD, and as far as the budget allows (which I assume would be top of the list with 3k budget). Once you picked a CPU, you can look up what socket it requires and search for fitting Motherboards that have this socket. Will likely be a modern Motherboard that can also fit any of the newer GPU's, but can't hurt to make sure it has the right slots for it. (If you're unsure just post here if you decided on something, then people can definitely help you to make sure the stuff fits together)

With GPU you can also go with a high-end one if you want to, but for Gw2 or games of a similar graphical level you don't need to go that high. But if you wanna run modern games smoothly, not a bad idea to pick a strong one. Like with that budget you can go nvidia RTX 4070 TI or 4080. They're in a similar price range. Or if you wanna save a bit, 4070 also shouldn't have any issues with modern games (if its only for gw2, you can go quite a bit lower than that if you wanna save money).

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

I like using benchmarks to have an overview of the strongest CPU's / GPUs especially when putting together a PC with a high budget.

Those are the main 2 things that affect gaming performance, having a strong CPU and GPU (+ a fitting Motherboard that doesn't bottleneck any of the other components). Having good RAM doesn't hurt, but don't have to spend super high on those. 16GB RAM should be enough for most games still, 32 if you wanna be very future-proofed (or want to have many browser tabs open on the side while gaming ^^). Lastly a power supply unit (PSU) that can deliver enough power for all the components - it's the part that takes the electricity from the socket in your wall and feeds it to all the other PC components.

Then you'd just need a case to put it all in and some fans to keep it cool. Though if you're very unsure about putting together your own PC, you can look up for pre-built options. They're usually quite a bit more expensive than buying the components on your own though.

Oh yeah, another important part is the monitor. If you like playing in high resolution, you'll need a monitor that can display that resolution at the desired refresh rate (basically the limit how high the FPS can go. affects how smooth everything that moves looks kinda, cause you have more frames each second refreshing on the screen). Like even if your GPU is super strong, it won't matter much if the monitor can't display high FPS or high resolution. I personally like 2560x1440 as a sweet spot resolution between quality and performance, but you can go 4k if you want to with that budget. Would make sure it has at least 120 refresh rate though. You won't always have 120 fps in all games, but a PC that strong can certainly pull higher than 60 FPS in many games.

Lastly. If you main aim is to play Gw2 and similar (older) games, you don't really need a high-end PC. You could save quite a bit of money by going lower. But if you wanna use the budget you mentioned, you can put a rather strong PC together. Though keep in mind that Gw2 isn't very optimized, so in certain areas and/or with a lot of players on screen even a super strong PC can get FPS drops (looking at you Wizard's Tower).

Hope that's helpful, tried to explain most things in an easy to understand way but not sure how successful that was ^^

 

Edit: And forgot storage. You'll likely want a fast SSD to put your games on, maybe 1TB (1024 GB) or more depending how many games you intend to have installed at a time. Personally I'd likely get 2 SSD's, a smaller one (maybe 256GB one) to have the Operating System (like Windows) and smaller apps on and a bigger one (1-2TB) to store my games on.

Edited September 23 by Chyro.1462

[AliamRationem.5172]

12 hours ago, Canadian Fishing Addict.6837 said:

What gpu did you pair it with?

I just have a 3060ti.  I don't think it matters all that much for GW2, though.

[Erich.1783]

I had a system built at micro center last year, 7800x3d and 7900XTX, and it runs everything well.  You seem to have a reasonable budget, I would suggest looking into having a system build rather than a pre-built.  While there are some pre-builts that are better than they were historically, there are others that still have issues.  Specific issues are things like poor choices in RAM, poor cooling, difficulty in finding a pre-built that does not have a CPU that significantly outperforms the GPU, resulting in not making full use of the part, or it could be the other way with a CPU that can not keep up with the GPU.  The last is less of an issue with GW2, more CPU is better for this game, but in general a balanced system will last longer for you.