New System Recommendations?

Kaneth

I need to put together a budget PC for my daughter to more or less just play Minecraft on, preferably modded Minecraft since she hasn't really gotten to dabble into that.

I would like to stay in the $400-$600 price range for her. That's just for the rig itself. I have a monitor and peripherals for her already.

Additionally, I want to keep the set up as small as possible. I'd prefer a laptop for her, but the bang for your buck just isn't there and she really doesn't need $1k+ of hardware. The wife and I were dabbling with the idea of the Alienware Alpha, since it's small and will be steam machine ready, which might be up her alley in a year or so (she turns 9 this summer). However, again it's about bang for the buck.

Keep in mind she doesn't need the absolute best graphics, but I'd like things to run on at least medium settings with a decent FPS rate.

Quizzical

How do you feel about Linux?  It will run Minecraft and it will take about $100 off the price tag, but many other games won't run at all.

Zebbakei

You can buy a prebuilt i-3 or amd 4300-6300 cpu computer that will accomplish what you want. Check out cyberpower pcs on newegg, look at the components as a guide of what to buy. Except, I'd suggest upgrading the powersupply and gpu, those components are often weak on prebuilt.

Kaneth

As it turns out a friend of mine is building himself a brand new system and decided to give my daughter his old. 

Quizzical

Originally posted by Kaneth
As it turns out a friend of mine is building himself a brand new system and decided to give my daughter his old. 

What's in his old computer, anyway?  It's likely to be suitable for your needs, but if it's something ancient like a Pentium 4 with Intel GMA anything graphics, it won't be.

Kaneth

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Kaneth
As it turns out a friend of mine is building himself a brand new system and decided to give my daughter his old. 

What's in his old computer, anyway?  It's likely to be suitable for your needs, but if it's something ancient like a Pentium 4 with Intel GMA anything graphics, it won't be.

i3--4150 3.5ghz, gtx 480, 8gb ram. Older, but not super ancient...and I can upgrade piece by piece later on for her.

Quizzical

Originally posted by Kaneth

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Kaneth
As it turns out a friend of mine is building himself a brand new system and decided to give my daughter his old. 

What's in his old computer, anyway?  It's likely to be suitable for your needs, but if it's something ancient like a Pentium 4 with Intel GMA anything graphics, it won't be.

i3--4150 3.5ghz, gtx 480, 8gb ram. Older, but not super ancient...and I can upgrade piece by piece later on for her.

That's a strange rig, as the video card was discontinued around the end of 2010, while the CPU and motherboard didn't exist until 2013.  Still, if you were coming in with a $400-$600 budget, I think you'll be happy with the performance.

The one caveat is that the video card puts out the most heat of any single GPU video card ever.  So if the computer seems like it's hot and loud, yeah, it is.  That might not bother you, and if it's a gift, you can't beat the price.  But if the heat or noise end up driving you or your daughter nuts (which probably won't happen, but could), know that the GPU is the underlying culprit--and a more modern GPU wouldn't have the same issues.

Kaneth

I'll keep that in mind, thanks Quizz.

My buddy is known for his "franken-rigs" as he has mostly just pieced his together from the leavings after upgrading the computers of his children. This is the first time in probably a decade that he's actually built himself something completely new.