I’m looking at getting a new desktop pc for my eldest who’ll shortly be 7. I’m going to set it up with a screen and peripherals that I’ve already got though in a perfect world I’d also be able to easily plug in my work laptop for if I work from home.

The computer doesn’t need to be high end as Nem jnr isn’t going to be playing call of duty or any other similar games on it any time soon but it does need to run minecraft well. From what I’ve read, I should go for something with a graphics card rather than integrated chip.

W7 would be fine given the upgrade path to w10 that should be available reasonably soon.

I don’t need a big hard drive for it either.

Budget, £200 would be brilliant but I think unrealistic but I’m assuming that 250-300 would be possible.

Thanks in advance

I’d look on Gumtree for those that belong to hardcore gamers. Many change builds regular so you’ll find a perfectly fast base unit for about £250 to £350.

Hardcore gamer base unit for £250? Try doubling that.

Look on pcspecialist, you can spec a quad core AMD Athlon with a 1Gb NVIDIA GT610, 500Gb HDD and 8Gb RAM for £347 including OS and all the other expected bits and bobs. You can get cheaper but this will be future proof for a good while for your needs.

You’ll also need a monitor but a cheap 1080p TV from Tesco or such will do.

I did similar last year – wanted to build myself a living room gaming PC for the price of an Xbox one.

Steambox

You could follow my suggestions to get the price down further with the AMD option (updated to whatever is current now). Doing that, you could probably build something suitable about £300. I think you’d do better s/h though. E.g. if sold mine it’d be in your budget.

You don’t need a hardcore gamer PC for Minecraft

I have a nVidia 8500GT card(PCI-E, regular vga, DVI and s-vhs output, no HDMI) sat here doing nothing. Pop that in a regular office PC and it will happily run Minecraft and reasonable framerates on most of the stuff on Steam(the kids main gaming source these days). I’ll pop it in the post if it’s any good to you.

Thanks all. No doubt of course I could spend a huge amount but as I said, it’s not a hardcore gamer unit I’m after, just something that’ll run most games that Nem jnr is likely to want (and be allowed) to play acceptably.

As mentioned already, not going to need high end equipment for what your planning on Nem.

It is doable, but might be worth investing towards the high end of your budget and get something that will comfortably do the task rather than just about do it.

Surprising what you can find on offer currently on Amazon, Ebuyer and the likes. Good thing (and bad) about PC’s is with the constant evolving tech, prices of old, perfectly good items go down!

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/

Good website for getting a general idea of prices, builds and what other people have thrown together.

Best of luck!

This Asus refurb looks pretty well specified for the price.

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/asus-k5130-i3-6gb-1tb-desktop-argos-refurb-229-2216552

Dual core i3, 6GB DRAM and 1TB HDD.

Not sure how good it would be for gaming but looks good vfm

Cletus – Member

This Asus refurb looks pretty well specified for the price.#

That one looks really good as my back up pc. 😀

I bought an unloved Biz spec i5 based HP PC for buttons on eBay – no one really cares about desktops unless they’re in gaming cases – RAM is cheap so upped it to 8GB – mine craft will run perfectly on it as is.

Biggest expense was an a GTX 750ti GPU which is massive over-kill for minecraft, but runs GTV V perfectly 🙂 Novatech sell one that’s small form factor (so will fit in pretty much any PC) and runs perfectly without a separate power lead – I believe they make a 970 in the same format.

PC gaming is hughly fashion lead, if you’re not bothered by illuminated fans, over-sized cases and super-fast CPUs and RAM you can achieve the same results for a fraction of the cost and it doesn’t look stupid in your living room.

PC gaming is hughly fashion lead, if you’re not bothered by illuminated fans, over-sized cases and super-fast CPUs and RAM you can achieve the same results for a fraction of the cost and it doesn’t look stupid in your living room.

fashion lead = illuminated fans

fashion lead =/= over-sized cases and super-fast CPUs and RAM

There’s a reason the cases are bigger, I couldn’t shoehorn a Coolermaster 212 Evo cooler into a 4U server rack if I tried. I’d also like to see your case temps with decent kit inside a low profile case (if you could even get a PSU inside it).

PC gaming =/= can achieve the same results for a fraction of the cost

If you can achieve the same results with a bog standard mobo and CPU then educate us all. You can get passable but probably not even close to the same results especially when you start getting into CPU limited modes or post 1080 resolutions. What you’re essentially saying is that a warm tuned Mondeo is on par with a race spec touring car.

I know the point you’re trying to make (that a decent graphics card on a bog standard build will do) but there’s more to consider. Like what happens when something goes pop on your proprietary base unit (PSU, MOBO) or if you want to upgrade beyond the (undoubtedly) limited spec? Buy all over again?

Usually these things are a false economy, fine for the short term but never a realistic long term solution, that’s why they go cheap.

Thanks again for the info.

So, if I did something like get a desktop that had a reasonable spec but no graphics card (which will still run minecraft but not higher spec games) I can then add a card later if/when necessary – as suggest by PJay above – what I’m hearing is that the graphics card seems to be the most important feature for games (so long as the rest of the spec is reasonable).

Might have something for you, just rebuilt my comp from scratch so have nearly everything already sorted. From memory all it needs is some RAM and a HDD, might already have a spare HDD though tbh with windows 7 already on it. If so, all it needs then in some RAM which can be found pretty cheap. Will have a look tonight at the spec and get back to you. Not wanting much for it tbh, need to get rid of it, that’s ofc if you’re interested

what I’m hearing is that the graphics card seems to be the most important feature for games (so long as the rest of the spec is reasonable).

Pretty much at the level you’re looking at.

IF you’re thinking of going new, and DIY, PC Gamer website recently did a “builder series” with a entry level, mid range and high end build spec at very good prices. Worth a google.

FWIW, I’d recommend buying the GPU with the rest of the PC – almost everything is accelerated by the GPU these days, especially Windows 7/8/10 if you turn on all the fancy effects.

What will happen, is you could end up with massive buyers remorse when your new shiny PC feels slow and sluggish because you decided to get a GPU later.

It’s as much about freeing the CPU up to do CPU things as it is having dedicated graphics processing.

Again, for casual gaming, a £150 GTX something or other (Whatever the current market is at) will be more than enough. especially for Minecraft!

here is that build guide i mentioned:
http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-build-guide-recommended-mid-range-gaming-pc/
(though this mid-end PC is really a budget-high end with that GTX 970, try their low end build)

High and low end are on their site also

So, as a starter, if I did buy new are these two obviously missing something that wouldn’t fit in well with adding a (second hand?) GPU? Both look to have reasonable specs as a starting point.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zoostorm-7270-8037-5700-3-4GHz-Windows/dp/B00QRRZDNO/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1433245292&sr=1-2&keywords=gaming+pc

http://www.amazon.co.uk/PC-Customiser-Graphics-A78M-E35-Included/dp/B00QIRTN70/ref=sr_1_5?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1433245292&sr=1-5&keywords=gaming+pc

I note that the zoostorm has a fairly low power PSU (250W) which may be an issue if adding a GPU as I understand it.

I should add that I was planning to use the W10 preview as a free way of getting the OS.

This is what I got in the end. Reckon it’s a bit of a bargin for what it is – graphics card included at £300

http://www.cclonline.com/product/179213/M32AD-UK003S/Branded-Desktop-PCs/ASUS-M32AD-PC-Intel-Core-i5-4460-6GB-RAM-1TB-HDD-Nvidia-GT-620-Windows-8-1-OS/SYS3998/

Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor
6GB DDR3 Memory
1TB Hard Drive
Nvidia GeForce GT 620 1GB Graphics
Wireless AC + Bluetooth v4.0
Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit Operating System

Sounds perfect for Minecraft – that graphics card was the exact one I had with a much older Dual Core CPU and 4GB of RAM for Minecraft and it worked perfectly.

If he / you wants to try bigger and better games you can upgrade the graphics card to something higher spec and it’ll run most games at a pretty high standard.