I Turned My $20 Laptop Into A Gaming PC... 

oh yeah get minecraft to run on a potato

I had a friend who had a laptop from 2013 or before. Even though he didn't let me optimize it much, I managed to get it to run at a playable 30-35 fps.

bro is obsessed with the 20$ price tag

love that you describe things in a way that is informative to people just starting out with mods but also in a way that doesn't bore people who have been in the community.

I watched your video my luck same day the next one comes out. Pure brilliance

how to run minecraft on a bad computer: 1. make it better

One more small improvement you can do is CPU undervolting, maybe even with minor overclock, depending on silicon quality. At least with Intel 8000 and 9000 series I had very good results for my laptop

I literally got a similar laptop for personal use, upgraded the ram and a fresh battery and ssd and its honestly pretty good for as much as i invested. Its suprisingly capable despite the age of the hardware

Uploaded on my bday, keep up the good work!

Reminds me of the bad old days when I used to exclusively play the OG Skyblock in Beta on my Inspiron laptop because that was the only way I could play Minecraft at a decent 30-ish FPS. I got a job in 2013 and you can bet your ass I saved every penny to build a gaming PC.

really good video, thanks for the info. i might actually have the same or similiar laptop laying around on the thought of the topic so yeha might do a diy project. great idea man appreciate the effort for the vid. :)

Nice video man👍 I always watch your vids

its a great day when he uploads, interesting as always

You should consider changing the OS to Windows-X Lite & try to optimise the software. In the stock version, as there are 100+ processes you may face fluctuating issue in the latest version so definitely consider optimising the OS.

Dude, i appreciate all the work you had to do the appropriate upgrade in this machine. This video is very good, and I'm new to your channel. But, i have to be honest with you: to do all of this to play Minecraft only... is a little bit of a waste. There are so many good games that you could try in this setup and increase the content of your tests: Burnout Paradise, Batman Arkham Asylum and City, Fallout, Call of Duty World At War, Modern Warfare (2011), PES 2013, and even emulators like PCSX2, to give you some options. Well, remains the suggestion, if it's interesting to you in the future...

So one of the things about Feather is that it's literally just running a stripped down version of Chrome - it uses the Chromium Embedded Framework, which is actually VERY resource intensive. I've also been told it uses CEF for things within the game itself as well for some reason. I advise AGAINST using clients like Feather or Lunar, because the benefits they have are FAR outweighed by the cons. I HIGHLY recommend using Prism Launcher on older machines like this one instead. I run it on my admittedly overkill machine, and the highest I've EVER seen was 120MB of RAM, and 2% CPU. I will admit to having never used Feather before but other CEF apps have used around 1GB-2GB of RAM each. Will you have to do some tweaking yourself? Yes, absolutely. But on lower end machines you'll be able to dedicate MORE performance to Minecraft, and knowing Java as a programming language it could USE that. Prism plus something like Fedora Linux and I'm willing to bet you could easily surpass 200-300FPS in 1.20.4 with Sodium

Wow this upgrade was equal to my old laptop which had 16gb ddr3 ram but it had an i7 4600u CPU which is similar to your upgraded one.

Bro makes interesting content just for us and himself. Respect to NotroDan

Idk if this laptop has an ethernet port but you can get an external gpu housing and connect it where the wifi card is plugged in. I've seen some tech channels try those out in the past to varying degrees of success

My leptop with all the optimizes run at 120 fps thanks Notrodan i learned every optimize from you

Ps: If you wanna use 1.12.2/legacy Minecraft versions. Use legacy fabric, it allows java 21(using cleanroom loader), and lets you use sodium on old versions, making Minecraft run even faster than optifine will ever reach

nah after the upgrade my mind was exploded. It was crazy that it was getting 500fps it was soo smooth. The price in all most have been at least 70-50 buck depending on how much you got them. Super cool though

Try using a software to update drivers, aswell as a custom OS like atlasOS that is light modification, alongside trying to mess around in the bios

Can confirm upping RAM and an SSD make massive improvements in performance.... If you've actually got a computer where you can do that. Sadly a lot of manufacturers started soldering stuff straight to the board severely limiting any hardware upgrading, especially on cheap budget laptops like those super-cheap netbooks. I've heard there are perhaps some performance/cooling improvements to soldered components, but generally I feel like it's all about the money. Either to cheap out on manufacturing or to get people to pay a premium to have good specs from the beginning by removing the ability to buy cheap upgrades later, as if you have the option it's often cheaper/better to buy third party upgrades later after a few years than pay a premium when it's new. Also just the ability to be able to remove the drive and replace it is valuable in many situations like if the MB dies so you can still get your files. I got an old laptop when my uncle passed that was a very laggy pretty much unusable mess that took forever to boot, switched it to an SSD and BAM night and day improvement, I'd even call it rather snappy, threw in a RAM upgrade while I was at it, but I feel the vast majority was just the hard drive was /sooo/ slow. Like I don't know if laptop 2.5 inch drives are just slower than the desktop 3.5 inch equivalents or if the advertised SSD cache on it wasn't working, but the benchmark showed the random access speed was literally only 1 percent of the sequential access speed, meaning it was probably taking forever to seek the right spot on the disk. Then I got another cheap netbook at the same time, and there's just no good way to upgrade it, the main drive is a soldered on 32 GB eMMC drive, there's only a single slot for RAM, which from my research is actually lucky as other versions of the same computer had the RAM soldered on. There's no place on the motherboard meant to install another drive, though apparently there's a janky way to jury-rig something including an adapter board to convert the slot for the wifi/bt board into an M.2 SSD slot, which then requires you to have a USB dongle for wifi/bt. Just not worth the time/money/effort IMO unless you literally have no other options for a computer. I mainly use it to try out linux with as the latest windows 10 just takes up the whole drive and barely boots, and there's a handful of things I was able to use it for, but mostly it just lies around collecting dust.

Alot of the improvement from the ram will be the fact you went from single channel to dual channel thus giving more bandwidth to the cpu and igpu

Did you apply the thermal paste on the new one, because in the video you didn't show you doing it

love your videos brother....

The most shocking thing in this video to me was the amount of FPS gained going from 8GB to 16GB, especially as you said you didn’t increase Minecraft’s allocated 2GB. Well done, it’s so great making old hardware that anyone else would consider ewaste, useful and capable.

You should definitely try linux or atlas os on this laptop! BTW what your mic and the stand for the mic?

Maybe a heatsink update or one of these fancy cooling pads that actually do something could solve some of the thermal concerns

Lossless scaling frame generation would be a great boost

Funny, I just switched to linux on *my* old laptop! So yeah, would want to see you do that!

Did you check to see if you’re using the highest mt speed ram that it supports because even a little bit more speed will definitely help improve less stuttering and better FPS

Brother can you make a vid for all the good minecraft launchers which are good with fps( not minecraft clients ). Nice and entertaining vids btw keep it up

2:02 My HP ProBook 4720s when I run XDefiant 💀

Bro had the audacity to call that a $20 laptop after the upgrades

One thing I'd recommend is trying to use an external gpu to try and get off of the integrated graphics

LETS GOO AN UPLOAD

amazing video! I'd like to see tiny11 before linux since it is better and I am thinking of going tiny11 aswell

The thing to remember about linux, is that as far as I know(which I'm far from an expert on linux), it doesn't actually run programs faster or overclock the hardware by default, it only frees up the bloat that modern windows tends to be loaded down with, so it uses up less drive space, RAM, and cpu usage for the base OS. By all means if you installed enough background processes on linux it'd be just as loaded down as windows, but at the most basic level it's just far more minimal. With how you've already upgraded the RAM to 16 GB and have an SSD, the only savings might be background processes and services that eat up the cpu, which to be fair on windows can be substantial sometimes especially with only a dual core processor. I'm curious if it would at least run a little smoother with slightly more FPS, but I don't believe it'd be anywhere near as drastic as the hardware upgrades. At least it didn't seem to be a massive game-changing boost when I installed linux on a spare drive and booted my main desktop with it, which is a quad-core 16 GB system. I can absolutely see it making a much bigger difference the older/more-low-spec you go though. It'd probably make a bigger difference with 4 GB of ram than at 16 GB, or say a single core vs a 4/8 core. Basically it's like the difference between running with a 10 pound backpack on vs without, your legs aren't any more powerful, you just have less weighing you down, and that 10 pounds of savings would be a much bigger deal on somebody out of shape vs a trained athlete.

btw if u are on 1.20 u can download fabric andf some mods which improves fps a lot

Your Minecraft really needs a Distant Horizon mod, great mod for render distance without sacrifying the performance of the laptop

you should probably record it with a camera as a recording software will destroy half of your fps. even on a budget gaming laptop rn, obs or recording softwares gives 30 fps on most games. without recording its ofc back to 60+

Which recorder are you using for recording the gameplay?

Bro his laptop is like my pc just before he did any upgrades

2:05 same when i try to play any game on my lets say gaming laptop lol😂

Dad had an old acer Aspire desktop from 2011, 4 gbs of ddr3, intel celeron, not even i3. Got an i7 4790, and got 16 gbs of ddr3. Found little bro playing valorant at 30fps with horrible quality but was running smoothly after optimizations. Spent like 70 bucks totals on the upgrades on that old hardware.

I would love to see these optimizations on a decent pc, Limitations spark creativity, limited Creativity without limitations is more powerful than pure creativity

big fan bro

I just realized I was not subscribed I am subscribing right now

You can add an external GPU through the pcie slot that the Wi-Fi card is using

U should try shadow that lets you mirror the game but from a gaming pc

90% of old laptops allow you to upgrade the proccessor. You can do it for 4th gen laptop cpu's 3rd, 2nd, 1st. I have no idea if you can upgrade 5th and 6th gen though.

Thanks notro bud and will u make a video with linux

You can also try running minecraft on a linux distro like lubuntu (lightweight ubuntu)

Notrodan! I suggest upgrading the laptops panel to a better spec and add an external graphics card.

in the past a few laptops cpu s is upgradable. i dont list all of them but maybe the second and third generation intel i3 i5 i7 processors was upgradable.

great video!!! me potato pc for life.

0:11 kinda nice for 20 dollars I mean my computer from 2011 has a i5 2450m dual core and a 540m ,still runs Minecraft at a clean 60fps

I had the same laptop HP Pro book 650 g1 but the processor is i3 4100m. I only upgraded ram and I got 50 to 60 fps in valorant on HDD , 60 to 70 fps in Minecraft with out playing on lowest settings. and 25 to 30 fps in gta5. i also rendered videos in after effects.

have you tried the gmm registry hack? it can make u add like 2gb or even 4gb of "vram" from your ram. unless it had the option from bios to set it.

A good way to get a potato pc to run well is by using Atlas OS

Now play heavy modes in it😁

13:03 Try pci to usb adapter with low profile gpu that dosent use external power

i think using mods on fabric like Sodium, Lithium, and Ferritecore would greatly increase the performance without having to put your render distance down so much

1.8.9 version kinda old, released in december 9, 2015. 8265U with MX130 and 8GB DDR4 RAM give me 20-30FPS even on m.2 SATA ssd

Would be interesting to see how this machine runs Bedrock, seeing as it is extremely optimised by default and provides much better performance as opposed to Java.

Ggs Edit: also don't use feather client it's bad for FPS

You should make a video about minecraft on rectify 11

can i have it?

I advise you to use AtlasOS to boost your in-game fps

Whic app did u use to allocate the ram?

im not gonna lie rn im watching on that exact laptop 😆

Omg he fixed my ancient laptop!

Have you tried using Windows Lite or Linux?

I have a PC with 16gb ram and a bad GPU/CPU do you have a idea for me how I can upgrade it by the way it's a HP to make it get decent fps on lower end games like garrys mod

You might be able to upgrade the gpu as well, if it is soddered you can still add a better one

I was surprised when a Pentium 4 2.8ghz of mine averaged 30 fps at 6 chunks in cmpack 1.8.8

i thought when it said "gaming pc" you gonna add external gpu, customize it, or add some weird stuff. im kinda disappoint tho but keep going with your content bro. note : also when you upgrade it, its not all about fps

Hey beat minecraft on that laptop and I'll subscribe I will wait you to beat it!

8:37 turn your render distance to 12 and let your computer render out all of the chunks then the sink your computer at your screens, refresh rate, but max out the FPS limit to 250 this will force the computer to work harder, generating frames, and the thinking your computer at the same time and also your chunks will be pre-rendered, for 12 chunks instead of two, which should help the stuttering

T ake out youre wifi card and connect an adapter that make us be able to connect a gpu ... u will also need a psu to also power it

Can you do that fps boost all of that

Everytime you say HechP laptop, a part of me dies.

I turned my laptop into a heater 70C+/158F+ while watching youtube

Superb

Do you have any suggestions for my minecraft sodium modpack problem all my mods are just fps boosting mods for 1.20.4 I made sure that they have all their dependencies and all are compatible and it worked it was supper smooth but when I exited my minecraft and hoped back in it didn't work😢 now I can only play 1.19.4 and below any suggestions to fix this bug

which software you use to record the game in low end pc?

what website did you use to find the full cpu list for the socket?

Holy sheet , i just realised this is the laptop i use but without the upgrades 😢

i have hp elitebook 8460p i have been upgrade my laptop intel i7 3670QM before my laptop using intel i5 2820QM its runing smoothly after i am using intel i7..also that i have been hyper fury 8+8 Ddr3 =16gb ram and also that i change my harddisk to the ssd disk..256gb..now its going be crazy...and i like my laptop..next month i want to add more gpu.."

i have the same one its not bad even with stock

Extra steps: Use 1.19.2(best version for optimization) fabric with sodium + every optimization mod. Then use a Jvm like Java 21 oracle graalvm + Zgc and 12gb(Don't put all the ram, java likes overhead). Use liquid metal instead of thermal paste for better cooling. Extra extra steps: Modify the laptop case to have extra fans Change the battery/power supply to allow faster cpu options . Or just get a desktop at this point

Hey Dan can you show me your Minecraft Settings for best fps

Are all laptop can be upgraded hdd to ssd??

Next add a dedicated graphics card.

How much cost RAM, new CPU and charger?

Hey Notrodan, I have a question. Back when you used Pop OS, and I believe Mint, did you ever notice a substantial difference between Windows downloaded vs Linux (pop OS/mint), in terms of performance and stability when playing Minecraft?

This is like the ship of thesius

If minetest had this kind of support it could run on a decade old android