£500 Budget PC for Minecraft

DR_Pingu

DR_Pingu

DR_Pingu

Associate
Joined
3 Oct 2014
Posts
581
Location
South West
Hi OCUK, it’s certainly been a while and I’m quite out of the loop now tbh so after a bit of help for a friend.

£500 budget PC currently only really required to run minecraft. It’s for a young lad who’s coming from console and so may expand their PC gaming after getting their first taste of the master race! No peripherals or monitor required. My friend might be able to Windows for free through family but they may have to get that on top, so worst case scenario would it be possible to give builds for both cases? Sorry if I’m asking a bit much!

Oh, I believe an SSD is essential too.

Cheers in advance!
 
Have a look through this thread as its on a similar budget although that's probably the cheapest your going to get with new parts and it will good going forward if he wants to get into PC gaming more.

Going for a second hand PC would be much cheaper and even an old i5 2500k with a cheap gtx 770/960 would be more than enough to run minecraft but going forward it's going to be lacking in some of the newer titles.

you can find Windows 10 for a couple of quid.

Bear in mind the new next gen consoles are coming out in a few months at around £500 and will match the performance in PCs that cost 1k+
 
Last edited:
Thanks Joxeon, I’ll see what’s for sale around me. I’ve informed my friend to have a look too. They’re insistent on wanting to build their own PC though.

I’m guessing you can’t exactly say where cheap keys are but would it be a well-known auction site to be the right area?
 
Would agree with going for a 2nd hand pre-built, though a lot of people around me seem to have rather inflated opinions of the worth of their system!

If he definitely wants to build, and it could be a nice parent/child project, I'd suggest looking at the clearance section here, put together the last few pieces. Then put in an offer on the clearance pieces, you'll be able to get a good price on things, especially if you're buying a load of stuff. To give an example, someone recently got a 2nd hand 1080ti for £300.. That's lower than you'd pick one up on ebay, and from a far more trustworthy source! 1080ti probably went quite cheap because it's 2nd, soon to be 3rd gen, but there's potential to put together a great little deal.
 
you could go for a build in the link but drop the Gpu and go with an APU instead. The new Renoir /ryzen 4000 APUs are out in a few days and would run minecraft np, you could always add a dedicated Gpu at a later date if he gets more into his PC gaming.
 
If you have to go new, you could squeeze something like this together if you can reach to this.

And yeah look on the popular auction site, about £5 for W10 license. :)

Ask in the CS forum about the GPU, it’s same price as new! Should knock the price down for you hopefully and get it closer to £500.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £558.81 (includes shipping: £0.00)
​
 
Thanks all, I put forward the second hand idea and he’s pretty keen now having had a little look (I did a local search to me and found a decent rig for £325).

I’ll put your build to him Sparx and if he moves on that I’ll help out with that side. Thank you, and thanks everyone for helping out :)
 
Alternative if you don't want to go second hand/clearance for the actual hardware:

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £547.85 (includes shipping: £0.00)​
​

The Asrock B450M Pro 4 is a decent mobo but the extra £20 for the Mortar is probably worth it.

The second hand market is definitely worth checking out, if your friend wants to go new he'll need to make some sort of sacrifice for £500.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom