This computer was a hyper-budget build for a preteen who just wanted something to play Minecraft. Using discarded parts left over from when a larger organization upgraded to newer hardware, what started as a minimum-spec Pentium office PC got a very significant processor and RAM upgrade for a very small amount of money in order to be competently handle less-demanding games like Minecraft and Roblox, plus some emulation and retro games.
Still, preteens and teenagers are inclined to want to play with their friends, and many games - and Fortnite, of course - are a less than pleasant experience using just integrated graphics.
Working with both restrictions from the older platform and limited budget, I was able to secure a GTX 660, a previous-generation GPU that has roughly the same graphical capabilities of a PS4 or Xbox One. I was also able to find a high-capacity set of DDR3 to expand the system memory to 16GB, giving extra headroom for the more modern and demanding games.
While not the fastest or flashiest system, it still enabled a teenager to play all the games they wanted to play, with enough performance to be competitive and a total system budget less than a console - plus access to all the cheap and free games on PC, without having to pay a subscription to play online!
