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IRL - What should a new multibox PC have. (1 Viewer)

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Aug 15, 2020
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I've read thru some of the "PC for EQ/Multiboxing" threads and they mostly are about user specific problems, which usually gets adressed with more questions than answers.

So in this thread i would like to ask your opinion what a new multibox EQ PC should contain.

What processors will work well? Do i need the best and topnotch processors to box EQ?
How much RAM? As much as possible of course, but what is enough for 6, 12, 24 toons?
Graphic cards? AS FPS is important how the boxes perform, it would an aim to get 60 FPS on all toons.
Silencing options? No one wants to sit for hours with an airplane starting in the room, right?

I am in the process of getting a new one and have no clue whatsover.
I am not stating a budget on purpose.
 
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processor well bigger/ more cores/ faster is better. ram well all of it (to the limit of your board). gfx card a hamster on a wheel wouldnt be far from the mark. silence? just get a toothpick slide it in your ear push firmly. as far as 6 toons anything that can run win 10 effectively (4gb ram), pretty much the same with decent ram (8gb) for 12, 24 toons decent ram (32 min) decent processor 8 threads or better. any decent gfx card
 
mine was built a few years ago but am running Ryzen 6 core 12 thread , 32g RAM , AMD RX 5700XT GPU .
i can run 6 toons flawless with GFX turned up looking nice , 12 toons with not much issue unless im running throu the GL where all the AFK people gather on my server. never tryed more than 12 dont have the toons
watching my resources my CPU is 100% my bottle neck it works but compared to the resources my GPU and RAM use it will be the first thing i upgrade.
 
I've read thru some of the "PC for EQ/Multiboxing" threads and they mostly are about user specific problems, which usually gets adressed with more questions than answers.

So in this thread i would like to ask your opinion what a new multibox EQ PC should contain.

What processors will work well? Do i need the best and topnotch processors to box EQ?
How much RAM? As much as possible of course, but what is enough for 6, 12, 24 toons?
Graphic cards? AS FPS is important how the boxes perform, it would an aim to get 60 FPS on all toons.
Silencing options? No one wants to sit for hours with an airplane starting in the room, right?

I am in the process of getting a new one and have no clue whatsover.
I am not stating a budget on purpose.

If you build a box with;
1 cpu core per character,
1.25 GB system RAM per character,
256kB video RAM per character,
it will multi-box just fine!

Avoid Intel and their mix of p and e cores. I'm a Ryzen guy myself. Pay little attention to single-core turbo speeds, you want a core that clocks well when all cores are engaged. https://www.newegg.com/amd-threadri...series/p/N82E16819113804?Item=N82E16819113804 with 64GB of RAM would just smoke 24 characters.
 
It really depends on how willing you are to compromise on the graphic settings in game; personally I have everything turned off/down, and it has allowed me to complete ToL/NoS raids with 54 characters (I can't speak for LS raids, I am still missing a couple of groups). On a pc that cost maybe approximately ~$1700? total about 10 months ago. (Intel i7 13700F, 64gb ram, 3060).
 
There are graphics tweaks you can use to get more out of a system. Depending on how many clients you plan to run at what visual quality. You can setup the client that you'll mostly have in the foreground to be the best looking with all the fixings, meanwhile the clients in the background have the lowest visual quality, barebone settings.

Some tweaks will make a big improvement, others might be small on their own but add up to a larger benefit when added together. At a minimum, I recommend setting up frame limiter, which is included with VV. Set your background clients to the lowest fps, which is .0001 fps and the foreground to 30 fps or greater.

Classic models will use less resources than the newer models, as will turning off shadows. There are many things you can tweak to find that balance of performance and visual quality. It's been discussed a bunch, search the forums for more info.

I can safely run six clients all day with a surface pro laptop. It has 8 GB of ram and iGPU for graphics. It's a fanless system. I can run 12 clients for about 5-6 hours before I'll shut it down for a short break to cool down and reboot. More clients over a longer period of time increases the chance of instability, due to heat and memory leakage.

If EQ Devs can correctly implement DirectX 11, it has the potential to increase performance and efficiency.
 
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I've read thru some of the "PC for EQ/Multiboxing" threads and they mostly are about user specific problems, which usually gets adressed with more questions than answers.

So in this thread i would like to ask your opinion what a new multibox EQ PC should contain.

What processors will work well? Do i need the best and topnotch processors to box EQ?
How much RAM? As much as possible of course, but what is enough for 6, 12, 24 toons?
Graphic cards? AS FPS is important how the boxes perform, it would an aim to get 60 FPS on all toons.
Silencing options? No one wants to sit for hours with an airplane starting in the room, right?

I am in the process of getting a new one and have no clue whatsover.
I am not stating a budget on purpose.
I recommend go cheap refurb laptops route. Cheaper if the acct's pc get flagged on a ban-wave and ideally you probably don't want to have more than 12-16 chars on any given box you're going to play on...

That gets into another dimensions...for example I have straight farm/support boxes (that support my main gaming boxes)...so that means anything i'm not actively engaging with that's just a support or farm bot gets parked on those shitboxes...

Stuff I care about (raids, groups, progression) i'm working on gets loaded on my main machine and from there i control everything else...

call it crazy but it works...most of my attention is focused 95% on my main one or two laptops evertything else runs on the side and shares one monitor on and keyboard on a switch...

Think of it like the matrix ships...

matrix cinematography GIF


As for specs...i go with refurbished lenovo thinkpads...these things are beasts...you can build them up cheap, they last forever...and take a ton of abuse.

Other added benefit of laptops...you can hook them to a switch or base and share a monitor or in a pinch...pop em open and double your screen count...or my favorite...grab a beer and go sit outside in the hammock and own shit while you hang.
 
The 3 most important multiboxer things to consider

1 - a bigger monitor than you think you need, or more monitors
2 - a mouse with more hotkeys.... you are using hotkeys to multibinds and hotbuttons right? Like 20-40?
3 - 32gb of ram, yes 16 works but just do it
This is a good one, normally 150$, 35$ for a refurb one and 9$+9$ for the usb dongle from steelseries, i just bought one and prefer it to my old razer
1705559213301.jpeg
 
My rule of thumb.

CPU: 1 core per character/2x per core in a pinch.
RAM: 6 GB for OS + 2 GB per character.
GPU: More is better but not super critical. I've got a 1070 shows some strain, 2070 is fairly solid.

I've boxed 6x, 12x , up to 40x and done it with using 2-5x computers.

I prefer having two fairly beefy machines and splitting the load between them, that way if anything odd happens I have a working back up of my setup. Before that I ran several machines where each machine had one group. It worked well enough but was a lot to juggle and having 4x monitors + 1x laptop on my desk was just too much.

Now I'm using ....

Main machine: ~$2200 - by far most expensive machine I put together. Its a beast. I've run 40x on it at which time the GPU becomes the bottle neck.

CPU: AMD 3950x 16 core/32 thread
RAM: 64 GB
GPU: 2070


Older machine: ~$1400 ~ runs 8-12 fairly smoothly. After that CPU becomes bottleneck.

CPU: Intel i7-7000k - 4 core/8 thread
RAM: 32 GB
GPU: 1070


I'm a big fan of the last gen AMD CPU's. 5000 line is "last years" model so they are priced to sell. Same with the NVidia 3070/3080's (when you can find them)
 
Silencing options? No one wants to sit for hours with an airplane starting in the room, right?

My AMD 3950x build is a beast and yet is whisper quiet. How?
- Air flow case with mesh opening in the front.
- 2x large low speed intake fans
- Noctura DH15 dual tower/dual fan
- 1x exhaust fan

Even under load the machine has plenty of air flow to keep the CPU/GPU cool. Air moves directly from the front across the CPU and out the back. The GPU gets air from the lower intake fan and its then pulled up and out.

Fans never ramp up to 100%

I also setup my living space so there is a "computer" area in my utility area and I run the video/keyboard/etc through the wall so there is no noise.
 
Running Ryzen 5800x, RTX 3070, and 96GB DDR4-4000 ram. I was able to run up to around 30 no problem with the normal optimizations people use. Haven't loaded more than that on this PC since I built it.
 
Running Ryzen 5800x, RTX 3070, and 96GB DDR4-4000 ram. I was able to run up to around 30 no problem with the normal optimizations people use. Haven't loaded more than that on this PC since I built it.


30 toons on one PC? How did your vRAM manage to handle that? My old RX 5700 with 8GB vRAM had 12 toons as a limit thanks to the vRAM bottleneck.

(1440P and highest on texture, no shadows or special light effects, but all magic and particles on max)

You maybe had the graphic on the ''1999'' look? I've seen many boxers use that setting for better smoothness.
 
30 toons on one PC? How did your vRAM manage to handle that? My old RX 5700 with 8GB vRAM had 12 toons as a limit thanks to the vRAM bottleneck.

(1440P and highest on texture, no shadows or special light effects, but all magic and particles on max)

You maybe had the graphic on the ''1999'' look? I've seen many boxers use that setting for better smoothness.
Yeah turned luclin models off. Stick figures when in background etc. Also have resizeable BAR enabled.

1705570755364.png
 
IRL - What should a new multibox PC have.

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