Best Recommended Hardware Specs for Modded Minecraft?

[ChemE]

I run Lubuntu Linux 15.04 on my box which is impressively lightweight and adds $0 to the cost of the box. It boots before the monitor can turn on and sitting at the desktop only uses 268MB of RAM. I do force the OS onto one core and Java onto the other so the MC instance gets its own 4.0GHz core and as it turns out that core has an amazing single core performance score. It really is a great cheap hardware setup for playing modded MC; not sure I could be any happier (for the benefit of anyone researching new hardware).

 

[KingTriaxx]

Fair enough. I play and do other things which require windows, so I can't get away with that.

 

[edhelbeleth]

I'd take Drbretto's advice too:
For the CPU, definitely prioritize direct speed over number of cores and other fancy features.
For the RAM, absolutely no less than 8 GB
not intel integrated graphics (ie any dedicated graphics card*) <-----this is really key.

Sorry to bring this topic up, but I'm gathering info to upgrade (mobo/cpu) my very old setup and am wondering why you rule out the integrated GPU.
I currently have an R5 240 and I ran into my first limitations with Infitech 2, I can still run Beyond and many other packs correctly.
I am considering getting a core i3 which has an integrated GPU (graphics 630) that outperforms by far my current GPU.
Why would that be a bad move? Does the integrated GPU eat your RAM, meaning I should get 16 GB instead of 8 GB if I want to stick with an integrated GPU?

 

[SevenMass]

Unless you use a texture pack with very high res textures, Minecraft doesn't need much in terms of graphics. Purely from a graphics perspective, the integrated intel graphics is already more than enough.

However, Minecraft does need every last bit of single threaded performance you can give it, especially in modded. A part of this performance is determined by CPU-RAM communication. Integrated graphics share a communication channel to RAM with the CPU core. A separate graphics card has its own Video-RAM. On top of that, integrated graphics take up a bit of your RAM. So if you have 8 Gib of RAM, and integrated graphics, you effectively have less than 8 Gib of RAM. Though if you have 16 Gib, this isn't an issue.

That said: It also depends on what modpacks you use and how large your bases tend to be. A more casual player in single player may not ever build a base large and complex enough to run into any problems.

 

[ChemE]

That said: It also depends on what modpacks you use and how large your bases tend to be. A more casual player in single player may not ever build a base large and complex enough to run into any problems.

<---- SO, not this guy!

 

[Hambeau]

Sorry to bring this topic up, but I'm gathering info to upgrade (mobo/cpu) my very old setup and am wondering why you rule out the integrated GPU.
I currently have an R5 240 and I ran into my first limitations with Infitech 2, I can still run Beyond and many other packs correctly.
I am considering getting a core i3 which has an integrated GPU (graphics 630) that outperforms by far my current GPU.
Why would that be a bad move? Does the integrated GPU eat your RAM, meaning I should get 16 GB instead of 8 GB if I want to stick with an integrated GPU?

One other consideration during an update from older hardware: Ram support. If your system is significantly old you could still be running with DDR2 ram which is much slower than today's offerings.

I just updated from an 8 core AMD FX8350@4GHz and 8MB DDR3 @1333MHz (1666MHz OCed) to a 6 core Ryzen 5 [email protected] (base) and 16GB DDR4@3000Mhz. The board I have has auto-overclock features that run the system at 3.5Ghz(CPU) and 2933Mhz (underclocked due to multiplier) at a temperature under 40c. on stock air cooling. I've seen up to a 4x speed increase in most things I do, because:

1)FX8350 wasn't the best performer out there, particularly with the slow ram (with faster DDR3 ram I could've OCed to 2133Mhz), but at 4GHz single core performance was acceptable and the price was right

2)Support for DDR4 ensured I could us faster ram, which helps overall performance.

My video card is now my bottleneck, being an nVidia GT610 w/2GB, but it was an emergency $60 replacement last year

 

[120dlittle]

i have and intel core i7 8700k running at 5ghz and when i am playing ant 1.12.2 pack speificly on the lost cities map or with lots of blocks or entities i can see cpu utilitseation of over 90% on all cores and threads so modern mod packs are highly optimised for multithreading

 

[120dlittle]

Unless you use a texture pack with very high res textures, Minecraft doesn't need much in terms of graphics. Purely from a graphics perspective, the integrated intel graphics is already more than enough.

However, Minecraft does need every last bit of single threaded performance you can give it, especially in modded. A part of this performance is determined by CPU-RAM communication. Integrated graphics share a communication channel to RAM with the CPU core. A separate graphics card has its own Video-RAM. On top of that, integrated graphics take up a bit of your RAM. So if you have 8 Gib of RAM, and integrated graphics, you effectively have less than 8 Gib of RAM. Though if you have 16 Gib, this isn't an issue.

That said: It also depends on what modpacks you use and how large your bases tend to be. A more casual player in single player may not ever build a base large and complex enough to run into any problems.

your talking rubbish when it comes to using graphics cards a good cpu like an i5 or i7 with integrated graphics gets like 30 fps on minimum settings mods realy do utilise the gpu realy well for textures and some physics even vanilla these days need a graphics card it realy doesent matter aslong as you have like a 60 70 or 80 tier card from nvidia or whatever amd's high end cards are from a recent generation your going to be fine . intergrated graphics are irellivent and if your playing minrcraft your proberbly wanting to play other games so building a computer with an i7 instaid of getting an i3 or i5 and getting a graphics card is bad value for money.

 

[Cpt_gloval]

I got an i5 ASUS with an Nvidia 960, I believe, at Costco for like $450. Has a 256 SSD onboard and a bay that I added a 1TB for over storage. Came with 8M added an additional 8.

This machine can and has played any 1.12 pack with no issues at 60+ FPS at the low ends. Only issue it has, and I'm not sure it is the machines and not something in my settings, is if I do a LOT of exploring/world gen, I will start to get stutter stops, available memory dropping to 0%. A restart of the client clears the issue. and by a LOT I mean fully filling out 1000s of chunks on Journey Map.

Sometimes buying a laptop for gaming is more about looking at an OK machine that has the expand-ability to be great. I payed $450 for the laptop and another $170ish for the 1TB HDD and 8G ram.

 

[Reddis]

Honestly, any "current" pc or laptop is going to run top end minecraft. The best way to make any purchase is to do your research. Get on a website like tigerdirect and see what the newest processor is, look and see what the most powerful gpu is, then start scaling back based on your budget. I am running big packs like rev3 and sevtech on a laptop with a core i7 ivy bridge processor, 16gb ram, and a 970m 6gb gpu. This is not the beefiest pc in the world, but I can run All the Mods 3 without issue for $900 when it was brand new.

In my opinion, there is absolutely zero reason to spend more than $1,200 on a rig unless you are attempting to do a very specific task like VR gaming, 3D conversions, etc.

 

[Hambeau]

Addendum to my 2017 post above (anyone else smell anything odd? ) :

I made 4 changes to the Ryzen 5 system I listed above this past year...

1) I got a Fractal designs R6 case. No real improvement other than noise and better air flow.

2) I got two new (Ryzen) Laptops in April, along with two Samsung EVO960 M.2 SSDs @ 240GB. Put one in my laptop, but the wife decided she was happy with a stock system. I sadly had to put the other into the desktop system

3) The GT610 died in the fall. I replaced it with a 6GB GTX1060 just before the prices shot up again.

4) When the BIOS update for the new Ryzen CPUs became available for my mainboard I updated and reran the ASUS auto-overclock utility again. My stock air-cooled 3.2GHz CPU now runs at 3.75 GHZ, around 40C. I could push it more with physical overclocking, possibly over 4GHz with the performance I have now, but I respect my silicon, at least until I get water cooling.

I moved my system to the new case, in the process installing the EVO960 and loading everything from scratch. The system boots in 6-8 seconds now, Minecraft loads a tiny bit faster due to CPU speed (loading from the rotary disk), and I'm seeing frame rates, after the game settles, of generally over 100FPS at 16 block render and highest quality settings. If I'm underground staring at a wall that jumps to nearly 450FPS