First, where did you read Minecraft, a simple sandbox game, can be heavy on a CPU? Minecraft is in no way that extreme on a CPU with the correct settings.

Second, anyone who needs a laptop for school is able to carefully pick one they need and purchase it themselves.

Lastly, why shop on third-party websites? Go to Amazon.




In conclusion; why make a PLANETMINECRAFT post for again, someone who DOES NOT NEED A LAPTOP FOR SCHOOL.

That looks fine. But if you're willing to spend a little more money, try looking at a low-grade desktop PC. It'll be more expensive, yet it'll pay off in performance and life length. ;)

And by the looks of it they both should be able to run Minecraft decently. I recommend downloading Optifine however, as this makes it run significantly smoother.

Also if you're looking at a budget friendly mouse & keyboard I recommend the Asus Cerberus line.

Depends on how much money you want to spend. You can check the models below for your son.

https://pc4u.org/best-laptops-for-college-students-under-500-dollars/

Thanks for all the advice. Definitely made it easier for me.

Cheers

Harry

Minecraft does not manage memory well in larger amounts- I find that anything after 3-4 gigs of DDR4 makes barely a difference.

I believe Windows uses about 1 gig on standby, so 4 gigs should be enough.

The CPU and RAM are, when it comes to Minecraft, much less important than the GPU. Minecraft isn't really doing much in terms of game logic under the hood, but its rendering procedure is horrifying enough that you'll want to shell out more for a GPU relative to the rest of the PC.

I believe it runs best with at least 2 gigs of VRAM.

I'd push toward the first option.

I will note that, having run Minecraft on both Linux (x86-64 Arya) and Win10, I can say that it runs more smoothly on Linux, but there are waaaay too many variables involved in that to speculate on the real McCoy.

This would be a great choice, it would run minecraft perfectly and great for school work
https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-To ... rds=laptop

Both laptops seem to be good enough for minecraft. I would recommend a laptop with 8 GB of RAM though, since Minecraft uses RAM to load up the world (roughly, I know).

With the processors being at least 2 GHz and the RAM being 8 GB, it sounds like a perfect laptop (to properly run Minecraft on the average settings). Also graphics are something that influences playing the game, but I don't know much about this. Most laptops won't come with a graphics card anyways.

As said before, if the game runs slow, make sure to tweak the video settings.

And to the others who would like to respond to this: I know RAM isn't everything, but I think we can all agree that 8GB is a reasonable and still relatively small amount.

Thanks for the advice, yes school use and portability is the priority but due to health reasons he doesn't get much joy in life so I would like for him to be able to play Minecraft.

I build my own Linux PCs and haven't used Windows since the early days of Win7 and don't know much about laptops so any advice is much appreciated.

Cheers

Moved to gaming and technology

if he needs it for school i'd take that as a main priority over minecraft but whatever

the two laptops are ok, they are both extremely cheap laptops when it comes to laptops, but they are solid machines, out of choice i'd go for the second one, it is pretty much exactly the same as the first, but is cheaper, it would also be more durable,

he wont be able to max minecraft on any of them but should be able to run them at started settings, but you should tweak the graphics settings anyway when playing.

(remember guys he is looking for laptops so we don't need to be like omg use this custom built pc)

I don't think they are that good although they may be able to handle it but it may be a better choice to get your son a desktop over a laptop as they are a lot more powerful and if your son got into gaming I think he would appreciate it more.

Here are some gaming pc's made by cyberpower specifically for minecraft
https://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/page/Minecraft-gaming-pc/

Although you would also need to pay for a keyboard, mouse and monitor if you got one of these