If you need to make any of them cheaper, just substitute the i5-8600k with an i3-8350k. Single core perf is the most important thing here, whether you have 4 cores or 6 isn't really going to matter for these games so performance will be virtually identical if you can get them to the same clocks. I just made the 8600k the baseline here because 6 cores is nice to have and it fit in the budget.
8gb + ssd/hdd
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/9ChHVYthe most well rounded, 8gb ought to be enough for mmo's and you have enough space. I don't know of any MMO's that currently require more than 8gb of RAM but more never hurts, especially if you plan to use Windows 10.
16gb + hdd
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/twbMPssacrifices the speed of an ssd to have enough RAM and storage for any number mmo's you're reasonably likely to be installing. Slower loading and boot times, and occasionally you'll experience short freezes in some games when other players are first zoning it or entering your viewing range.
16gb + ssd
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/fbggYrmakes the least compromises to actual performance at the cost of less storage and is the best choice if you can stick your laptop's hard drive in there for extra storage, OR you can get by on 238gb of usable storage with the number of games you play, OR you can hold out with that much til you can afford more storage.
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I have played a lot of MMO's and 99%-100% of the time, low fps resulted from too many effects/players bogging down my CPU due to the poorly optimized nature of most all games of this type, and GPU utilization decreases dramatically during these times. I went for what would give you the best possible scenario in these situations where FPS would otherwise be unplayable with a slower cpu and faster gpu.
The 1050 ti is only going to have significantly lower fps than a 1060/1070 only when it doesn't really matter, i.e when little is happening on screen, and you'll be getting high fps anyway.
There's also the fact that, aside from barely impacting gameplay in most of them, lowering settings from max rarely increases fps at all in a CPU bottlenecked situation but can dramatically increase fps when the GPU is holding frames back.
/e you'll need an 8gb thumb drive if you don't have one which will run you like $5-$9, I'm assuming you aren't using laptop speakers/trackpad and have headphones and a mouse already, and an okay rubber dome keyboard can be had for $10-$20. OS is free if you can use your laptop's product key or know where to look.
This post was edited by DCSS on Jan 4 2018 02:30am