yea, i think i understand what you are saying.

i need to find out how his friends play......i think one plays on an i-pad or something.....

so many options !!

Can you poke around inside the case to see the wattage on your power supply? It's the big metal brick screwed to the top or bottom of the case, with a fan pointing toward the rear.

I'm thinking it's 300w, and I don't actually see any reason that a Zotac 1050 Mini wouldn't work.

Just note that because it's a Dell, you would have to tinker in the BIOS to get aftermarket cards to work. You may have to turn CSM ON and Secure boot off. That sounds scarier than it is.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MCU1ERO

The reason I would advise them over someone else is because of the excellent return policy in case anything went wrong.

GTX 1050 is the absolute latest and greatest GPU technology, albeit significantly underpowered compared to it's $600+ big brothers. It has performance equal or greater than cards that were 3x that price in the not so distant past. The Zotac mini 1050 means it won't require any power from the brick, and draws right from the mobo.

Unless I'm missing something, it's the perfect solution at a pretty reasonable price.


Regarding Minecraft with friends, I found articles that seem to indicate cross-platform compatibility is available, but can't really find any true confirmation. I play with my kids on PC.

I saw recently that Don't Starve Together offers cross-platform, but I'm almost positive Minecraft doesn't now and won't anytime in the near future.

i would probably avoid trying to game on a tablet, unless literally all of their friends do it. The tablet minecraft is its own weird little world

Minecraft Pocket Edition runs on phones, tablets and Minecraft Windows 10 edition runs on pc's. Both editions can play with each other. They also work with VR Minecraft for GearVR or Rift.

You can play on a local network or online.


BTW, Java Minecraft includes a copy of Windows 10 Minecraft.

While Minecraft is an incredibly good game on its own, mods and texture packs adds so hugely to it that anything but the (java) pc version is basically Minecraft (very) Light.

Feed The Beast or bust imo.

What do you folks think of Facebook Games ?

I have played Words w/friends, Chess, and Backgammon on FB in the past...........and thought those games were pretty good.....so just did a deeper dive into Facebook Games.......downloaded "Facebook Gameroom" - just randomly picked & played some Farm Paradise builder game, plus a round of old school Asteroids & Space Invaders.....just to mess around w/it real quick....noticed games I had heard of but never played like Farmville, and Angry Birds available.....also a fair amount of MultiPlayer Role Playing, Action, Builder, & Strategy games seemed to be available.......( a bit too late for me to delve into those tonight)

Seems like a decent selection of various game types for a wide range of ages to chose from.......and all FREE aint bad ??

Do the kids these days like Facebook Games ?

Any one here do Facebook games ??

At this point, I know we are getting him & his brother MineCraft, I just don't know if it will be on two i-pads, an x-box, or (1) PC. (Might be hard to justify TWO PC's for their house)

I guess the i-pad would beat nothing at all (which is what he currently has)

Plus....perhaps his Uncle could buy a copy of Minecraft too, and we could play here on a PC when he comes to visit

Ideally we could get them ( he & his younger brother) each a dedicated PC......need to work on that. We are trying to break down the mom (my sister) who has traditionally been anti gaming....she is at least now willing to let them have an i-pad.....with a game on it

Can you not mod the x box version?

There are skins and texture packs, but I don't believe there are any mods.

I don't know much about xbox though, so there may be some mod-functionality, but it's not going to be anywhere close to what you get with for example Feed The Beast.

Yea, just one pc that they'll have to share is probably not ideal, so if the options are between one pc or a non-pc option where they can play together, then go for the latter.

The regular Minecraft is brilliant and will keep anyone occupied for hundreds of hours - especially with 8/9-year olds where a lot of the stuff that older/grown up players will appreciate from mods will probably be too complex anyway.

That said - two pcs would unlock the best of every possible world for them

Minecraft on the PC is not splitscreen-friendly. One PC per person playing. If their mom already has a PC, odds are it will run Minecraft. The game itself is not very resource intensive, though you may need to limit render distances if it's a really old computer.

Give your sister the "but they can use it for homework!" speech. Unless their school district has joined the anti-homework movement like ours.

I don't have a Facebook account so I can't comment on facebook gaming, but I know my own kids play web-based flash games. Probably the stuff they find out about from school. I played them in high school.

Couronne, anyone?

Once you have everything set up, hell even starting now, bookmark humblebundle.com and check it every Tuesday. They offer huge discounts on bundles of what can be incredibly excellent PC games. Some are older, some newer, but it's a great way to build a steam library. This past bundle had a slew of management/Sim games including A YouTuber's life (a pretty popular game among the youtube community right now.) 7 total games including the current rendition of Out of the Park Baseball (a wildly popular baseball Sim game, though mostly for older sports fans) that normally sells for 19.99 on its own, all for $12

9 years old is pretty young to start in on PC gaming. I say get a console and an iPad, or just two iPads. They're self-sufficient ecosystems, so the kids won't have to deal with maintenance, upgrades, viruses, software installation/troubleshooting and all the other **** that annoys me about PCs.

Xbox 1 is better if you think they'll use it as a general multimedia machine (TV/sports/movies/streaming), PS4 is better for pure gaming. Give them another 4-5 years then buy them a cool gaming rig. They'll appreciate it and make use of it much more than they would now. An alternative is buying an i5 4670 CPU and a nice GPU (Geforce 1060 6GB or Radeon 480 8GB) and all of a sudden your current PC is a very solid gaming rig for about $400. Both are trivially easy to install with help from youtube, but you could also pay a little extra to have Geek Squad or somebody do it. You could even just get the GPU and call it a day. I've been playing Witcher 3 (one of the most demanding games out there right now) on a 3 year old video card an an i3 similar to yours and it's perfectly playable on medium settings. With a new video card, your i3 would be a bit of a bottleneck but still play any game just fine.

85% of my gaming is done on a pc, but I would suggest just buying an Xbox one for them. It's a multimedia bastion. Or just get 2 iPads.

There is something to be said for giving pre-teens a computer without anyone in the household that can handle basic maintenance.

Kids click on silly things and get themselves malware.

I harp on mine constantly about not clicking things or going places they shouldn't. But I've still had to format a couple hard drives over the years.

Does your wife actually buy this?

Not sure what that means.

My son downloaded some adware by accident and it's so annoying. It's not malicious, just changes the default Google homepage. Haven't tried really hard to get rid of it yet.

Somehow, my kid is really good about not clicking on games he thinks might be "inappropriate."

This would be my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd concern. If there isn't anyone in the house who "knows computers" do not get a computer for a 9 year old.

Give XBox. 2 controllers. Done.

My Son played on My Mums Laptop, which is like a force multiplier for malware.

Could not actually clean it not in safe mode as when trying to download software through a browser could not stay on any page I wanted long enough due to re-directs.

I'd recommend a console and some games that have co-op so they can together. I'd also opt for some slightly older console since you can probably get PS3 and ton of games for fraction of the price of PS4.

that you visiting illicit sex websites got you malware, and you're blaming it on other people

Oh, I see.

The hard drives in question were on kids' computers. I've been computer STD free for many many years. If you're getting malware from porn in 2016, you're in to some seriously kinky ****, or just don't know basic internet survival skills.

I had to have a sit-down with my son over computer shenanigans when he was 12. He was getting up at 4am and executing some pretty interesting searches. I spared no details of how much I knew about it, and made it clear to all the kids that I am fully aware of absolutely 100% of the things they do on the computer at all times. Which is true.

That didn't stop them from occasionally clicking shady links from people in Steam chat or landing on the wrong website when searching for otherwise tame things.

Still, letting kids learn these things when they're young and can't do much damage is better than sheltering them from it. The more computer-literate kids are, the better. Start 'em early!


Edit: All of our household computers are in one large office. I'm all about giving a long leash for failure, but I'm not bat**** crazy. No computers in the bedrooms.

So it looks like the final decision is for a console w/controllers......they want Minecraft specifically.

Is x-box one the way to go ?

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one

What other popular (non-violent) games can they play (8 and 9 year old boys) ?

Does this just connect to the TV (like my old Intellivision) ?

Does it come with some free games ?

So, they can play with/against each other in the house with this. Can they also play multi-player games over the internet with X-Box One....? I am not clear how this works. The TV is high speed broadband cable.

The only computer in that house is an Apple I am just learning. (if that matters).

I have a PC where I live, and will also get Minecraft so they (and me) can play here when they visit and I am on baby sitting duty. I have also been playing Farmville2, & Summoners Gate:War of Clans on Facebook.......messing around with League of legends that I downloaded, and looking at Stream, was about to stream DOTA2 - but it gave a message saying it was a four hour download at xxxx per something or other........so I declined to proceed with it. Is it really FOUR hours ?? Figure I will give it a try when I have more time.....

Anyways.....txs for all the tips ! The one thing I am still a bit confused with is how the kids play internet games over x-box or is x-box just local ?!

If I got an x-box at my house and they came to visit......could they access their Minecraft world from my house, even though they built the world at their house ??!!!!

Kids should have a good x-mas !

The choice of Xbox One or PS4 will generally come down to what consoles more of their friends own.

Consoles only come with free games if they are in a bundle, what games you can get bundled with a console usually changes every few months.

You can currently get an Xbox One bundled with minecraft: https://www.amazon.com/Xbox-One-500G.../dp/B01L1Y0RZQ

You would also need an extra controller as consoles usually only come with one: https://www.amazon.com/Xbox-Wireless.../dp/B01GW3H3U8

It will connect to your TV just like old consoles, assuming your tv has HDMI which any HDTV will have.

Modern consoles connect to the internet just like a computer. You can either connect to a wireless network or with a wire directly from your modem/router.

You need an Xbox Live Gold ($50/year) account to play online with others. The console comes with a couple weeks free then you need a subscription. The modern consoles have digital stores so once you connect to the internet you can buy games/xbox live gold subscriptions right on the console.

Playing games locally (splitscreen) or online varies by game. Some games don't have splitscreen. Minecraft has both splitscreen gaming and online.