PC replacement

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by ptah, May 12, 2022.

  1. ptah Augur

    OK so I am working with a seven, check 8 year old machine. I have 100% gotten my money from this box.

    What I am looking at doing is just replace this box with a EQ/simple simple windows only machine. I am old, I dont play much other games outside of EQ, maybe some Monster Hunter if the nephew comes over. I am ok with harddrive switchout, cards etc if I dont lose a screw.

    Yea I run multi accounts but nothing too crazy 2 to 3 accounts and am 99% ok with single box and trader.

    What do I seek? Just a sounding board of ideas from others, if they were in my spot.
    Budget? I dont know. Machine is basically email and eq so I feel I dont need much. I am anti Labtop poor results in past and I am not gaming outside of my gaming room. IE I love my display, chair, etc

    AMD multi core? right any need go over 4 to 6 cores?
    8 to 16meg of ram feels like 8 is enough?
    what size of SSD? or Do I really need one?
    Video Card is big question, feels like everything I read is eq is CPU/HD game not a VC is this correct?

    Lets see, lost interest in raiding so no need rebuilt a beast. I would like something that I could get a few years of play. Just a sounding board. Maybe a nice thread of sharing idea or other builds helps me and helps someone else.

    Thank you in advance.
  2. Truetotheblue Augur

    16GB RAM and SSD are really all the quality things you'd need. Even your 8 year old PC should be fine and you likely won't notice a big difference in this game on a newer machine. VC doesn't impact it much, very CPU dependent. You can get a cheap 100$ laptop and run multiple accounts on it fine. So if it's truly EQ and another game here and there just go cheap, get something with an SSD, and you're golden. Can also just swap in the SSD too if a machine doesn't include it.
    KarmaKitty and Hobitses like this.
  3. Cicelee Augur

    I would love to know where I can get a $100 laptop at LOL...
    Veteran_BetaTester likes this.
  4. kizant Augur

    Ebay has some good deals. I assume they didn't mean buying new.
    Hobitses likes this.
  5. Iven Antonius Bayle

    Why do you want to replace the 8 year old system and how high is your budget ? Most users do set the budget much to low and then receive a piece of new scrap that will be outdated very quickly. 8 years is not old. Just from the economic point of view you should wait one or two years before you buy a new system as there will be a huge hardware boost and the prices are currently very high.
  6. Cicelee Augur

    I would just be worried about buying something like that from Ebay, FB marketplace, places like that. Maybe I have heard too many horror stories of selling broken things or viruses on hard drives and such. I am sure 99% of the stuff is legit by legit sellers not looking to screw anyone over, but that 1% sometimes ruins things for the rest
  7. Truetotheblue Augur

    Ebay. They worked great when I played on some of the earlier Truebox servers.
    Hobitses likes this.
  8. Bigstomp Augur

    You probably want an SSD and as others said, probably 16GB of ram or more.
    Other than that, a best buy special is plenty to play EQ. I used them for years. Buy a new one when the old one breaks.
    (Back up your .ini files! - they're small. Email them to yourself if needed)

    Depending on what you get you may want to uninstall some crap they'll install by default and be sure your EQ log directory is not being monitored by the anti-virus.

    If you're going to use it on the road a laptop might make sense. If it's just going to sit at home, you'll get better perf with a tower. Even if in theory the laptop is equal. Thermals matter for laptops so using it as a desktop is not ideal. (and towers are probably cheaper)
  9. Windance Augur

    What is your current system? ( Hardware / OS )

    What is it about your current system that makes you want to upgrade?

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    First - Identify the bottle necks in your current system

    Bring up "Task Manager" -> Performance -> More Details.

    You should see some graphs showing CPU usage and Memory usage. You may need to right click the CPU chart to bring up the option to see "overall" vs. "logical units".

    Now load up EQ and watch those CPU graphs. If anything stays 80-100% then you know that is a bottle neck and is something you want to factor in.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Then - Consider what you might be able to upgrade.

    If you have an 8 year old system then you a likely running on a hard drive. A SSD drive will likely make your system feel NOTICABLE more responsive. Especially if you do a clean OS install and wipe out any trash that might be slowing the OS down. The cost of a new ~500 GB Sata SSD are very reasonable. Make sure you buy a well rated SSD though. They will cost $20-$30 more but you really don't want to skimp out on your OS/Data drive.

    Depending on the age of your system and the GPU you have, you might also consider replacing the GPU. The GPU supply has started to normalize over the last two months and you can now find something like a NVidia GeForce 1650 or Radeon RX 6500 both of which for around the ~$200 mark new. Again this should make a noticeable difference in how responsive the game feels.

    A great resource for checking out pc parts is googling "pc parts picker" and looking at what over people are buying and what kind of reviews they are leaving.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Good luck on your journey
  10. Chikkin Augur

    it was before inflation, obviously.
  11. zleski Augur

    The only thing I would say is a must have these days is a solid state hard drive (SSD). You can have a dog slow processor and run EQ in potato mode, but you'll feel it most if you have a slow storage device.

    You could probably find some inexpensive builds made by folks on PC part picker's website and other, similar social computer building websites.
  12. Smokezz The Bane Crew

    Meh, there is nothing wrong with buying used. First thing you should do if you buy a used system is a wipe and reinstall anyway. Anyone that doesn't wipe, is taking chances.
  13. Deux Corpse Connoisseur

    SSD is very nice makes for fast zone loads. Dedicated video card with at least 2GB ram is very helpful and lets you enjoy more eye candy in the game. A 16gb RAM machine is the default for boxers although if you run a full 6-box team 32gb would serve you well especially since Windows and EQ are now 64-bit. For a CPU 4-core at least and doesn't have to be high end i7 intel or equivalent...i5 seems to be just fine.
    minimind and Hobitses like this.
  14. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    If you want the next PC to last 8 years too, then don't assume that EQ's system requirement won't be raised again in the future.

    I will be very surprised if we are still rocking a DX9 based engine 4 years from now....
    Stymie likes this.
  15. Chikkin Augur

    What's the latest on the whole "64 bit client will eventually allow us to do more with the graphics/limits of the game"

    Has there been any rumblings about that in the last couple months?
  16. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Nothing new, they have planned a new UI-engine for next year, and hinted at "more and higher resolution art" in the future.
    Hobitses and Chikkin like this.
  17. Chikkin Augur

    New UI engine? /swoon
    Jumbur likes this.
  18. Metanis Bad Company

    Costco usually has good deals on IBuyPower "gaming" desktops.

    Your minimum configuration should include:
    NVMe M.2 SSD (NOT SATA SSD, make sure it's NVMe because it's at least 4 times faster than SATA!)
    16GB RAM (sorry, 8GB is just not enough anymore! prefer 3200MHz or faster)
    Some REAL graphics card, actual make and model won't matter, just don't rely on Integrated graphics on the motherboard! If you buy an AMD CPU go with an AMD video card, Intel goes with Nvidia.
    Veteran_BetaTester likes this.
  19. Iven Antonius Bayle

    It does not help much as EQ is the bottleneck. The server does need to synchronize the client with the new zone and the world and all inventory, bank, parcel and house items need to be loaded which are stored on the server. This does make items to a much more important factor for zone loading times than a SSD as not much data is getting transfered between the client and the local storage medium. The difference between a SSD and a magnetic harddisk is only about 1 second.
    This depends totally on the screen resolution and so on the computer screen itself. RAM is important for big resolutions but speed does not matter as nearly everything is getting calculated by the CPU. Any GPU can do the job if the Virtual Machine is activated in BIOS or UEFI and enough memory RAM is available. These are the reasons why even 14 year old computers and modern laptops can be fine. Dedicated video cards will vanish from the consumer market sooner or later and will be only needed for special professional purposes like CAD, video, and game development.
    16 GB is the minimum for Windows 10 as there 6 GB RAM are already used by the OS, browser and background programs. With two EQ instances (clients) running it does hit 8 GB. 1GB per instance. 64 bit programs do require much more memory and disk space than 32 bit programs. For Windows 7 8GB can still work even when boxing two instances but it is not recommended for the future.
  20. Smokezz The Bane Crew


    The difference for the computer overall is night and day with an SSD. Building/buying a computer without one these days is foolish at best.
    Hobitses and Chikkin like this.