Refurbishing Old Computer

[CharlieR1]

Hello all!

 

So my neighbor got an old computer for free from his office, and is looking for me to upgrade it so his son can play Minecraft. I tried updating drivers, etc but still runs less than a frame per second at lowest settings.

 

He has a budget of about $200.

 

The current specs are:

Pentium E3500 @ 2.6gHz, LGA 775 socket

-6gb of DDR2 RAM

-Decent ~500w PSU (does not need to be upgraded)

-500gb to 1tb hard drive (does not need to be upgraded)

 

Am I on the right track here? I hear Minecraft is oddly optimized.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: AMD A10-6800K 4.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($109.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard  ($45.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($52.99 @ Newegg) 

Total: $208.97

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-26 01:13 EDT-0400

 

Thanks!

--Charlie

[thekeemo]

try to find a used q6600

[Sam Z Man]

If you really want to boost performance on Minecraft make sure there running a mod called optifine it literally can double your frame rate on a low end PC, when I used to play that's what I used and it worked so well.

[TwOne]

I'd say: drop an entry level graphics card in there, somewhere along the R7 250 - GTX 750 performance range. Then see if the motherboard supports it and upgrade the CPU to a quad-core. They are usually cheap nowadays, you can pick one up for less than 50$.

 

 

I speak from experience, I've ran Minecraft on various types of hardware, from classic AMD Athlons (1999/2000s) to Core i5's, etc.

 

The game likes to have at least 4GB with background applications, so 6GB is fine.

The game was 70-85% on my CPU and 50-85% on my GPU. (Specs below)