World of warcraft RAM question?

I read on the WoW site that all you need to run WoW when it comes to RAM is 1gb? I have 3 gbs of RAM in my desktop and my video cad has 1 gb of RAM itself... I heard different answers that 1 is enough to run wow on minimum and I also got an answer saying my computer will break with in a year if I play WoW with only 3 gbs?? I really don't want to break my pc and I want a smooth running WoW don't need super high end graphics all the time I just want no lag and smooth playing... thanks for any help and btw if u could answer one more question as well does the gig on my video card help towards ram or playing? What exactly does it do? Thanks