School and minecraft system?

[cub1061]

Hello, I am building a small pc for my daughter to use in her room for school work and some games.
Spec so far
Asrock H110 deskmini
Intel G4400
16gb ram
128gb Kingston ssd
27" monitor

Can the Intel built in graphics run any games?
Will it run minecraft stable?

Or do I change my plans and get a system with a gpu? bearing in mind that space is limited.

Thanks

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What is the total budget??

[DanceswithUnix]

It will run Minecraft, but with a very limited draw distance. Probably as well as her peers at school can run it, who are probably on a family laptop.

I have to say that 16GB of ram seems really OTT and a lot of money. My kids are on 8GB, and that is seeing them through secondary school with not just office applications but things like 3d modelling and professional animation packages.

Shame the new AMD APUs aren't out yet, that would be ideal.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If you are on a tight budget an A8 9600 which is around £54 would do the job,and since it is on AM4 there is a good upgrade path available to you too.

[cub1061]

So the intel graphic won't hold up to minecraft.
I already got the G4400 now thinking of paring this with a cheap gpu, maybe a gtx 730 or something similar.

[DanceswithUnix]

If you already have the G4400 then you might as well try it, if only because right now graphics cards are stupidly expensive and that even seems to be trickling down to the low end ones.

Just make sure you allow for a GPU to be added in the future. TBH even in machines where I am specifically told they won't play games, I like to allow for playing The Sims as it just seems to happen (for some reason, I never understood that game myself )

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Is the RAM bought and is it DDR3??

[scaryjim]

... Spec so far
Asrock H110 deskmini
...

With all due respect, WUT?! £125 for a non-standard restrictive platform? And I can't even tell from the Scan listing if it comes with a power brick or if you have to buy that separately?

*How* limited is space? I'm a huge fan of SFF systems, but you'd have to have no space at all to be seriously considering something NUC or STX-like. If there's no room for an mATX tower on the floor, there's a few options in slimline desktop cases (they can sit under the monitor like it's the early 90s ) and there are a couple of low profile GT 1030s for < £70. With careful selection of component and dropping to 8GB of RAM (which will be plenty, imo) it probably won't cost any more, either...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

With all due respect, WUT?! £125 for a non-standard restrictive platform? And I can't even tell from the Scan listing if it comes with a power brick or if you have to buy that separately?

*How* limited is space? I'm a huge fan of SFF systems, but you'd have to have no space at all to be seriously considering something NUC or STX-like. If there's no room for an mATX tower on the floor, there's a few options in slimline desktop cases (they can sit under the monitor like it's the early 90s ) and there are a couple of low profile GT 1030s for < £70. With careful selection of component and dropping to 8GB of RAM (which will be plenty, imo) it probably won't cost any more, either...

SODIMMs though:

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/asro...-mini-stx-1151

No PCI-E slot either!!

[scaryjim]

SODIMMs though ...

Yeah, I noticed that. Just checked memory prices and DDR4 SODIMMs are cheaper than DIMMs for the same speed and capacity? WUT!? Scan have a 4GB DDR4-2400 SODIMM for £39.98, their cheapest 2400 DIMM is £46.49?!

*shrug*

The other thing that occurred to me is the spec for a 27" monitor? I know individual taste and all that, but I've never seen much point to anything over 24" for genuine PC use, and I think my current work setup is 22" FHD which is more than ample - at which point you can save a huge amount (FHD 21.5" monitors start at < £70, and 24" ones at £90ish)...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yeah, I noticed that. Just checked memory prices and DDR4 SODIMMs are cheaper than DIMMs for the same speed and capacity? WUT!? Scan have a 4GB DDR4-2400 SODIMM for £39.98, their cheapest 2400 DIMM is £46.49?!

*shrug*

The other thing that occurred to me is the spec for a 27" monitor? I know individual taste and all that, but I've never seen much point to anything over 24" for genuine PC use, and I think my current work setup is 22" FHD which is more than ample - at which point you can save a huge amount (FHD 21.5" monitors start at < £70, and 24" ones at £90ish)...

The lack of a PCI-E slot is going to seriously limit the gaming potential of the system!

I have a 25" wide gamut qHD display,which is fantastic for image editing!!

Anything larger would probably take too much desk space up TBH!!

Good thing I bought it in 2016 when it was £240,its now around £400!!

[scaryjim]

... I have a 25" wide gamut qHD display,which is fantastic for image editing!! ...

Might be a bit OTT for school work

[cub1061]

the monitor I manage to pick up on the cheap from Gumtree at £80.
to be honest the asrock desk mini, I was planning to build a small NAS with it which I didn't complete so using whats on hand rather than building something new.
it is near silence so great for a small room, I could sell it and recover some cost but she actually love the small size of the system.
Just hoping it can run minecraft before we finish redecorating her room and set the whole thing up.

[scaryjim]

... to be honest the asrock desk mini, I was planning to build a small NAS with it which I didn't complete so using whats on hand rather than building something new. ...

So ... you've already got the heavily restricted hardware platform that won't take a dGPU, the CPU to stick in it, and the monitor to connect it to? Do you have the RAM and SSD already too?

If so I'm not entirely sure what the point of this thread is, as you've basically completed the build? Just chuck it at your daughter, and I have no doubt that she'll tell you as soon as she finds something she can't do on it! IME it will probably be because she's downloaded something and ended up with a system riddled with malware, though....

[cub1061]

So ... you've already got the heavily restricted hardware platform that won't take a dGPU, the CPU to stick in it, and the monitor to connect it to? Do you have the RAM and SSD already too?

If so I'm not entirely sure what the point of this thread is, as you've basically completed the build? Just chuck it at your daughter, and I have no doubt that she'll tell you as soon as she finds something she can't do on it! IME it will probably be because she's downloaded something and ended up with a system riddled with malware, though....

I mainly wanted to know if the inbuilt graphics will handed minecraft, the thread just got a bit out of hand. lol

[DanceswithUnix]

Might be a bit OTT for school work

My daughter might disagree, she does enough graphics that the monitor is a large percentage of her system cost. I am sure that will only increase, so investing early seemed better than buying twice.

I mainly wanted to know if the inbuilt graphics will handed minecraft, the thread just got a bit out of hand. lol

Threads do that, sometimes the helpful gets a bit much

Still, it will handle Minecraft. You might want to play with the settings a bit, and don't turn up the draw distance.