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What the best computer that can decently run Minecraft under 1000 bucks?

Sues

Junior Member
I want to get Mine craft, but my computer is
very bad for playing it with. I just want a computer
that can decently run Mine craft. Any kind of windows will be fine.
 
You would be best off posting this in General Hardware, they can help more. What is your current computer's specifications? You might be able to upgrade it.
 
You need plenty memory and a fairly fast cpu. 8Gb of ram and any reasonable intel cpu (e.g. i3) should do it. Graphics don't matter much.
 
My $35 raspberry Pi 2 plays its pretty well LOL.Really though If you wanna go el-cheapo then try a Xeon L5639 and a x58 motherboard. you could get an entire setup for under a $300.00-$400.00
 
$1000 is a lot of money for a Minecraft client. To the best of my knowledge, you aren't going to get a whole lot of extra oomph from having a lot of cores while playing that game, so go for the Intel 4790k which will give you the best combination of clockspeed and performance-per-clock of anything out there right now (assuming you aren't overclocking, you never said anything about that).

All the rest of it, you can ask people in General Hardware. They will post prospective builds for you.
 
When I play minecraft it's usually on an old linux box. Q6600, GTX 580, 4gb RAM. Plays fine but i'm not using any mods.
 
It runs great on my $130 Chromebook with Ubuntu. $1000 is a very large budget for a game that runs well on 8 year old hardware.
 
My grandson plays the game on a 5 year old gaming laptop with a 2.2 ghz Core 2 duo and a mobile 9800GT. I dont think he has played for a while though, so the game may have become more demanding.

You dont need to spend anywhere near 1000.00 for a good gaming box for Minecraft. I would think a 400 to 500 dollar off the shelf Haswell i3 with a 100 -150.00 gpu like the GTX750/750 Ti should be more than adequate, as would even an AMD apu, at least an A8 or A10.
 
Granted the title is unclear, but I think the OP does not mean that he wants a thousand dollar build unless it is necessary to play minecraft, which of course it is not.

A bit more information would be nice though, such as what computer the op has now. If it is any kind of recent desktop system at all, it might only take a gpu upgrade to play minecraft.
 
Granted the title is unclear, but I think the OP does not mean that he wants a thousand dollar build unless it is necessary to play minecraft, which of course it is not.

A bit more information would be nice though, such as what computer the op has now. If it is any kind of recent desktop system at all, it might only take a gpu upgrade to play minecraft.
Right, yeah a NUC might run it fine.
 
Sorry, nothing less than a 5960X with 64GB of 3GHz RAM and a Titan X will get you more than 20FPS in this game.

But seriously... Joke thread? You could spend half that and get over 100FPS constant...
 
FYI my son places the game on a 2500k (stock), 8gb ram, and HD3000 graphics and it performs perfectly fine with fancy graphics turned on and draw distance at half.

The game looks hideous and looks like it should run on some old Pentium 2 system but any semi decent modern PC can still run it easily. It's hardly a PC killer.
 
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I think the OP wasn't sure how much it would cost, and so was just saying it had to be under $1k.

Honestly if he plans on playing modded he could spend $1200 to get 60fps constant 1080p. You would want 16GB RAM and a GPU that has 4+GB VRAM. My machine starts dragging into the 55fps area if I start going crazy with the settings. I can use 3GB VRAM loading some of the biggest texturepacks.
 
Modded or vanilla? I would say grab a 4690k, GTX 960, 8GB RAM as the core, and build from there.
omg, at least give some sign that you are trolling. you could confuse the boy.


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minecraft isn't that hard to run, you can easily spend less than a grand (you could run a server for a grand, probably).

the two issues are:
what can you get for a grand (because life doesn't end with minecraft) and
would you rather spend less or more (sonds stupid, but bear with me)

you can get a monster PC for a grand. will play GTA, witcher 3, etc. is that what you want ?

would you rather have a system that can run minecraft easily, and other games occasionally without being an expensive monster?

my suggestion is to go for a midrange Intel system, starting with :
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HYnZK8

this will run pretty much anything short of those titles designed to showcase new graphic technology, and even then it will run those at *slightly* diminished detail.

$680 (without a monitor)

you can pimp it up if you want, but it comes with a R9 280 which is WAAY more than what minecraft needs.
 
My phone runs Minecraft better than my laptop with an i5 (Arrandale) and Radeon 5470 while running a higher res to boot. 😱

Suppose that may be because Pocket Edition is actually optimized, and I believe ported in C++ while the PC version runs on Java.

To answer the OP. Minecraft is deceptively demanding on the PC, requiring more than what the simplistic visuals lead you to believe, but now is hardly a challenge for current processors and even iGPUs. You can probably get away with a Haswell i5 and stick with the iGPU, or go with an APU from AMD (avoid the E and C series) . You're probably looking at spending $600 for said desktop tower minus peripherials. Mid end prebuilt desktops should suffice so ,long as you avoid anything with the AMD processors I specified, and the Intel Atom/Pentium (some Pentiums are cut down Haswells, but I'd avoid the Pentium brand just to be safe).

On the Pocket Edition side of things, if you can live with the limitations, you can pick up a brand new $180 Nexus 7 that will run the game flawlessly unless you decide to start a giant forest fire.
 
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Go for an i7. Multithreading works, but not very well, so single core perf is important. Get fast RAM (8GB atleast ), and a decent GPU.

If it's not a decently MT game, why would you recommend the i7 over the $100 cheaper i5? MT is the i7's real advantage over the i5. Their ST performance are virtually the same.
 
I don't understand the reason for recommending a slow i5 for Minecraft. AFAIK, it is single-threaded, and would therefore run best on a late-model CPU with high clock speed, regardless of core count. I'd just as soon run a i3-4170 at 3.7GHz.
 
If it's not a decently MT game, why would you recommend the i7 over the $100 cheaper i5? MT is the i7's real advantage over the i5. Their ST performance are virtually the same.

The fastest stock CPU Intel sells for single-threaded anything is the i7-4790k. Assuming OP is not a troll (and he could be), he seems like he's newbish enough to not want to bother OCing an i5 to close the gap between an unlocked i5 and the 4790k in ST tasks.

To address what others have said, yes, a budget of $1000 for a Minecraft box is pretty silly, but that was the number he lobbed out there, so may as well operate within the listed constraints. I'm not going to pretend to know what's best for the OP until the OP can be bothered to better articulate needs and means.

We don't even know what machine the OP is using that is allegedly too weak for Minecraft.
 
No reason for a K series if no overclocking in that case. It would be silly to buy a 4790 (k or otherwise) for minecraft IMO.
 
Thing is, I'm not trolling. I have a 4.3Ghz 4670k, 1.1Ghz 280x, 8GB RAM, and I am running off an SSD but could still drop below 40fps. I'll upload proof if you wish.
If OP has $1k and wants to play modded (that is why I asked) I think the 4690k, GTX 960, and 8GB RAM is a great place to start.
 
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