Minecraft System Requirements 2023 – minimum, recommend and Ray Tracing

It might be old but Minecraft recently got the biggest boost of all

Table of Contents Table of Contents

Whether you already have a PC or are looking to grab the best gaming PC for Minecraft in 2023, you need to be aware of the system requirements. Minecraft has recently been updated (well the Bedrock/Windows 10 version at any rate), so it can now fully use raytracing if you have a compatible GPU.

This steps up the minimum specs if you are after that experience, but if you aren’t bothered by that, most PCs these days should be able to handle it. Remember, if you want to know more about Minecraft laptop compatibility, check out our guide for laptops that can run Minecraft. Here, we go through what settings you’ll need to run Minecraft ‘vanilla’ without Ray Tracing, and then tackle the specs needed to run Minecraft at the highest possible fidelity. We also go into the Java Edition requirements in the latter part of the article. Let’s dive in.

Minecraft System Requirements

Below we go through the minimum and recommended requirements to run Minecraft.

Minimum Minecraft System Requirements

CPU	Intel Core i3 3210 | AMD A8 7600 APU or equivalent
RAM	4 GB RAM
Storage	180 MB to 1 GB available space
GPU	Intel HD Graphics 4000 or AMD Radeon R5 series | NVIDIA GeForce 400 Series or AMD Radeon HD 7000 series
OS	64-bit Windows 7 or later
Screen Resolution	1024 x 768 or better
Network	Broadband Internet connection

Recommended Minecraft System Requirements

CPU	Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz / AMD A10-7800 APU 3.5 GHz or equivalent
RAM	4 GB RAM
Storage	180 MB to 1 GB available space
GPU	GeForce 700 Series or AMD Radeon Rx 200 Series with OpenGL 4.5 (excluding integrated GPUs)
OS	Windows 10
Screen Resolution	1024 x 768 or better
Network	Broadband Internet connection

Minecraft With Ray Tracing (RTX) System Requirements

CPU	Intel Core i5 or equivalent
RAM	>8 GB of RAM
GPU	DirectX hardware ray tracing capable GPU like NVIDIA GeForce® RTX 20 Series and higher, and AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series and higher
Storage	180 MB to 1 GB available space
OS	Windows 10 64-bit You may have to update your Windows operating system and graphics drivers to experience ray tracing. You can learn more about updating Windows 10 here.
Minecraft Version	1.16.200 or higher

NB – If your hardware does not support ray tracing, you will be unable to download ray tracing  content from the Minecraft Marketplace.

Minecraft Java Edition System Requirements

Minecraft Java Edition Minimum Requirements

• CPU: Intel Core i3-3210 3.2 GHz / AMD A8-7600 APU 3.1 GHz or equivalent
• RAM: 4GB
• GPU (Integrated): Intel HD Graphics 4000 (Ivy Bridge) or AMD Radeon R5 series (Kaveri line) with OpenGL 4.4*
• GPU (Discrete): Nvidia GeForce 400 Series or AMD Radeon HD 7000 series with OpenGL 4.4
• HDD: At least 1GB for game core, maps, and other files
• OS: 
  • Windows: Windows 7 and up
  • macOS: Any 64-bit OS X using 10.9 Maverick or newer
  • Linux: Any modern 64-bit distributions from 2014 onwards

Minecraft Java Edition Recommended System Requirements

• CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz / AMD A10-7800 APU 3.5 GHz or equivalent
• RAM: 8GB
• GPU: GeForce 700 Series or AMD Radeon Rx 200 Series (excluding integrated chipsets) with OpenGL 4.5
• HDD: 4GB (SSD is recommended)
• OS (recommended 64-bit):
  • Windows: Windows 10
  • macOS: macOS 10.12 Sierra
  • Linux: Any modern distributions from 2014 onwards

Playing Minecraft on a Chromebook

Minecraft is only compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux so it isn’t able to run on a Chromebook. ChromeOS uses a web browser as its OS so the only way you can play on a Chromebook is by installing Linux but then you won’t get the benefits the ChroomeOS brings. It’s possible, but whether it is actually worth it is down to you.

Minecraft macOS Minimum System Requirements

CPU	Intel Core i3-3210
GPU	Intel HD 4000
RAM	2 GB
File Size	1 GB
OS	OS X 10.9 Mavericks

Minecraft Linux Minimum System Requirements

CPU	Intel Core i3-3210
GPU	Intel HD 4000
RAM	2 GB
File Size	1 GB
OS	Any modern distributions from 2014 onwards

Minecraft’s popularity has never wavered, making it one of the most popular cross platform games of all time. The system requirements for Minecraft mean a lot of people with varied hardware can enjoy this title and long may it continue.

Do you need a good PC to play Minecraft?

This all depends. For those not looking to run the game with Ray Tracing, you need very little RAM and a modest graphics card. However, this all changes with Ray Tracing. You’ll want at least 8GB of RAM here and a mid-range card.

What is the minimum RAM for MInecraft?

You’ll need at least 4GB of RAM to play Minecraft on PC.