The Top 5 Games to Play on a Low-End (Budget) PC
We all love PC games, but some are just too difficult to run if you don’t spend an absolute fortune. Let’s take a look at the games you can run on a budget PC….
In this article we will go through some of our top picks for the best multiplayer games you can play with a low-end computer. Some of our choices will be a little more difficult to run than others, but all of these games are amazing if you’re a competitive gamer looking for something to keep you entertained, without breaking the bank on a new computer! Thanks to https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/ for the requirements information.
1 VALORANT
VALORANT is a free-to-play first personal tactical shooter game developed and released by Riot Games. There are many ‘agents’ to choose from in VALORANT, making the game accessible for any playstyle! You can be the one who runs into the entire enemy team all guns blazing or be the strategist, making clutch plays and winning your team rounds with utility.
The players on VALORANT compete for a rank, which showcases your skill level. The ranks in VALORANT have a very large range from Iron, bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, ascendant, immortal and Radiant, which is reserved for the top 500 players in each region. This huge area for ranking makes VALORANT extremely competitive and you’ll have to be on the top of your game to rank up!
VALORANT has been optimised incredibly well by Riot Games and has some of the lowest running requirements of any first-person shooter right now, which is one of the reasons it is so massively popular.
The minimum requirements to run VALORANT are:
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 / AMD Athlon 200GE
- RAM: 4 GB
- OS: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit
- VIDEO CARD: Intel HD 4000 / Radeon R5 200
- PIXEL SHADER: 3.0
- VERTEX SHADER: 3.0
Although if you want to compete at the higher levels, it is unlikely that the minimum requirements will cover your need for performance.
Here are the recommended requirements for competitive VALORANT:
- CPU: Core i3-4150 / Ryzen 3 1200
- RAM: 4 GB
- OS: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit
- VIDEO CARD: GeForce GT 730 / Radeon R7 240
- PIXEL SHADER: 5.0
- VERTEX SHADER: 5.0
- DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 1024 MB
2 Rocket League
Rocket League is a super fun game of vehicle football! You can customise the appearance of your car and have different options to choose from. The aim of the game is very simple, score goals in your opponent’s net and finish the game with more goals than the enemy team has.
Rocket League is also free-to-play! The daily population of Rocket League players is huge, so you never have to wait very long to be placed into a match, whether that is casual or competitive. Rocket League’s competitive scene is massively popular, and people love to flex their high ranks to their friends.
Unfortunately, the minimum requirements for Rocket League are a bit of a step up from the previous game, VALORANT, but the game does look fantastic when you consider its simplicity.
The minimum requirements to run Rocket League are:
- CPU: 2.5 GHz Dual-core
- RAM: 4 GB
- OS: Windows 7 (64 bit) or Newer (64 bit) Windows OS
- VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce 760, AMD Radeon R7 270X, or better
- PIXEL SHADER: 5.0
- VERTEX SHADER: 5.0
- FREE DISK SPACE: 20 GB
- DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 2048 MB
The recommended requirements for playing Rocket League are:
- CPU: 3.0+ GHz Quad core
- RAM: 8 GB
- OS: Windows 7 (64 bit) or Newer (64 bit) Windows OS
- VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, AMD Radeon RX 470, or better
- PIXEL SHADER: 5.1
- VERTEX SHADER: 5.1
- FREE DISK SPACE: 20 GB
- DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 3072 MB
If these requirements are a little out of your range, don’t worry! There are other games on the list which are less intensive to run than Rocket League, for example…
3 League of Legends
League of Legends is unique within this list as it is the only MOBA game (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena). On this game you battle 5v5 against other players to destroy a large, protected gem in the base of the opposite team. The team who destroys the enemy’s gem (Nexus) first, wins the game. The game is played from an isometric perspective, so you’re looking down on your “Champion” which is what the characters are referred to as. League of Legends is also a free to play game, of course!
Each Champion has a set of unique abilities and can be used in harmony with their teammates abilities to help their team get the victory. League of Legends is the most popularly played eSport in the world and has over 80 million monthly players, with 27 million of those playing the game DAILY! This means it is one of the most competitive games on the market right now, if you want to push your skill boundaries, this is the game for you!
League of Legends is well optimised, just like VALORANT, as it is made by the same company, Riot Games.
The minimum requirements for running League of Legends are:
- CPU: Intel Core i3-530 / AMD A6-3650
- RAM: 2 GB
- OS: Windows 7
- VIDEO CARD: NVidia GeForce 9600GT / AMD Radeon HD 6570 / Intel HD 4600 Integrated Graphics (DirectX 10)
- PIXEL SHADER: 4.0
- VERTEX SHADER: 4.0
- FREE DISK SPACE: 16 GB
The recommended system requirements for running League of Legends are:
- CPU: Intel Core i5-3300 / AMD Ryzen 3 1200
- RAM: 4 GB
- OS: Windows 10 64-Bit
- VIDEO CARD: NVidia GeForce GTX 560 / AMD Radeon HD 6950 / Intel UHD 630 Integrated Graphics (DirectX 11)
- PIXEL SHADER: 5.0
- VERTEX SHADER: 5.0
- FREE DISK SPACE: 16 GB
These requirements should be able to be met by the majority of computers, meaning there’s a good chance you can download League of Legends for free right now and start gaming!
4 Fortnite
Fortnite is currently one of the most famous games in the world and has been hugely successful since its release due to the amazing effort the developers put in to keep the game fresh. Fortnite is a battle royale game, meaning that everyone drops into a game and then they fight it out until only one person, or team, is remaining and then crowned the victors! It is hugely competitive due to the massive player-base, and you have to be incredibly talented to make it to the professional scene.
Fortnite is owned by a massive company named Epic Games, who also own the game we mentioned earlier, Rocket League. Typically, Epic Games’ releases are a little more demanding of power to run than the games of Riot Games, but they still do a great job at optimising their releases so people with a less powerful PC can still join in on the fun!
The minimum requirements to run Fortnite are:
- CPU: Core i3-3225 3.3 GHz
- RAM: 4 GB
- OS: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit
- VIDEO CARD: Intel HD 4000
The recommended requirements to play Fortnite are:
- CPU: Core i5-7300U 3.5 GHz
- RAM: 8 GB
- OS: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit
- VIDEO CARD: Nvidia GTX 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7870 equivalent DX11 GPU
- PIXEL SHADER: 5.0
- VERTEX SHADER: 5.0
- DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 2048 MB
Some lower-end laptops might not make the cut to run Fortnite effectively, but most desktop computers should be able to handle it!
5 Minecraft
How could we ever make a list of games to play with a low-end PC and not include one of the most popular games of all time, Minecraft? The answer is, we couldn’t. Minecraft was originally released in 2009 by a man named Markus Persson, otherwise known as Notch. It was called The Cave Game and there was no intention for the game to make waves in the way it did.
Nowadays, Minecraft is owned by Microsoft after they acquired Mojang Games for $2,5 billion in 2014, making Notch one of the richest men on the planet. The game is now in constant development, and we will continue to see the devoted Minecraft fans making fun multiplayer servers for everyone to play for years to come!
Minecraft might just seem like a bunch of blocks, but you still do need some power in your computer to run it, especially if you’re hoping for a smooth gaming experience.
The minimum requirements to run Minecraft are:
- CPU: Intel Core i3-3210 3.2 GHz / AMD A8-7600 APU 3.1 GHz or equivalent
- RAM: 2 GB
- OS: Windows 7 and up
- VIDEO CARD: Integrated: Intel HD Graphics 4000 (Ivy Bridge) or AMD Radeon R5 series (Kaveri line) with OpenGL 4.41Discrete: Nvidia GeForce 400 Series or AMD Radeon HD 7000 series with OpenGL 4.4
- PIXEL SHADER: 5.0
- VERTEX SHADER: 5.0
- FREE DISK SPACE: At least 1 GB for Game Core and Other Files
The recommended requirements to play Minecraft are:
- CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz / AMD A10-7800 APU 3.5 GHz or equivalent
- RAM: 4 GB
- OS: Windows 10
- VIDEO CARD: GeForce 700 Series or AMD Radeon Rx 200 Series (excluding integrated chipsets) with OpenGL 4.5
- PIXEL SHADER: 5.0
- VERTEX SHADER: 5.0
- FREE DISK SPACE: 4 GB
- DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 256 MB
This is not a hugely powerful computer specification, so hopefully you should be able to play Minecraft without having many performance issues!
That’s it! There’s our list of games you can play on a low-end computer, most of which are free-to-play which we’re hoping you’re happy about. I really hope this list was helpful to you.
Have fun gaming!
