Can You Play Skyrim on a $100 PC?

Can you play Skyrim on a $100 Potato PC? How good can you get a low spec Skyrim to look? How do you tweak the graphics of Skyrim on a low spec computer to look the best? Can you run mods on a low spec PC? We're answering all of those questions in this video! You CAN run Skyrim on a $100 PC with mods! And yes, this is on Skyrim Special Edition.
#skyrim #koubitz #mods
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Mods included:
Beth INI
Vivid Weathers
Noble Skyrim Retexture (Performance version)
aMidianborn Book of Silence
Rustic Clothing
Realistic Waters 2
FYX Water Mesh Optimization
eFPS Exterior FPS Boost
Low Res Particles and Flora Mod
Fantasia Landscapes
Blended Roads
Static Mesh Improvement Mod
SkyUI
Unofficial Skyrim Patch
Eyes of Beauty
Superior Lore Friendly Hair
Hvergelmir's Aesthetic Beards
Tempered Skins
Skysight Skins
Elmlock Armor
Opus One by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommon...

[@aliengaming2390]

BEST KZbinR

[@bobbobinson1326]

The algorithm finally worked. A video I actually wanted to watch from a creator I don't already watch. Awesome!

[@revanisalive]

got me too

[@turpasauna2739]

how the hell do you manage to make your game more optimized on that thing compared to my pc

[@celestial002]

Probably has something to do with a 2000+ mod load order. Don't worry, it's a struggle over here too. Can always cheat with Nolvus if you're tired of modding and want to play. 😂

[@Mustang-fu6on]

​@@celestial002see if I could run 2000+ mods I have no doubt that I would. Am an addict

[@owo3822]

Management bro, management

[@Mustang-fu6on]

@@owo3822 what does that word mean? I know of no such thing 🤣

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

ini tweaking can do a lot. Things like view distance and particles will help with performance. view distance with outside performance and particles with well lit interiors.

[@aag_194]

I played legendary edition modded on a lower pc for years and enjoyed it a lot despite the problems i faced

[@ASavageEye]

I have you beat dude, I regularly play OG Skyrim on my Ps3...zero mods and no DLC's

[@Caustic968]

Played OG Skyrim on 360. I got in the habit of saving every 5-10 minutes. By level 46 i had a single overwritten save that had 700+ on it😂

[@stampli3251]

You helped me fix the brown face glitch in fo4 by recommending a mod years ago on a stream. Been subbed ever since. Great content! Seriously underrated channel

[@PurpleSanz]

I'm currently on a quest to achieve the best possible visuals without ENB/ReShade and, after trying many weather mods, I just couldn't believe the huge difference Vivid Weathers made compared to the usual suspects (Obsidian, CoT, Cathedral, Mythical Ages, or even the more impressive ones like Azurite or RAID). The only one that surpasses it would be NAT.III in my opinion, but effects like fire or snow look weird when you go ENBless. So what I ended up doing to simulate NAT.III is to pair Vivid Weathers with Vanilla HDR, EVLaS and Imaginator for exteriors, then Lux and Paraphernalia Anti Flicker for interiors (I tried ELFX+Shadows and RLO and they look awesome but Lux is just unbeatable). I put Sunlight on either High or Ultra on Vivid Weathers MCM, saturation on +10 on Imaginator (you don't even need to do this) and that's it. I've been playing for around a month with this setup and I'm loving every second of it. Besides Vanilla HDR (I can't recommend it enough), I would suggest packing your textures to BSA using Cathedral Assets Optimizer, it will reduce loading times and eliminate any possible stuttering. This works because Skyrim is way more efficient at reading BSA files instead of loose DDS textures. My potato: i7-3770 NVIDIA GTX 660 8 GB RAM DDR3

[@darthmadara7984]

pc: $100, Skyrim: $50, this youtuber's humor and laughter: priceless! There are some things money can't buy, for everything else there is mastercard

[@jacklonderr]

how can someone be so charismatic and fun omg I love your channel already! I remember playing skyrim on a potato pc and running at 34 fps +100 mods lol. love from Brazil!

[@AnomalyVoid]

I love how she admits she a third rate modder and we are just fools for just following along. 100% spitting truth, I can't stop watching tho.

[@franciscoaguirre96]

My old del laptop. A Dell m5100? Some chonky boy. It cost me about 70 bucks. It could and would run modded skyrim. It was horrible but it was fun. I still have that laptop.

[@zauce1627]

about 7 months ago i had a pc with i5 4590 gtx 960 2 gb(which fried) and i did mange to play skyrim around 40-60 fps smooth . 1k -2k textures , ultra tweaked enb (dont rem name ) and much more ..nice content btw, love it !!

[@Druid896]

This video was very helpful. I would consider myself a casual gamer, and so I play Skyrim on my windows laptop. It's nowhere near as down bad as your $100 pc, but it is still not exactly designed for gaming. I play on the lowest settings, and have 1 or 2 FPS mods installed for smooth gameplay. Vivid weathers was such a helpful recommend, because I have been playing with "default" graphics. It made such a difference and has not negatively impacted FPS in any way. I'm gonna try see what other mods I can get to improve graphics without hindering FPS. Also, unofficial patch is a must, because Bethesda ain't gonna fix things anytime soon hahaha. It has been a really interesting experience customising things for optimal performance and graphics. I have always loved Skyrim. Recently, I have been hibernating like a bear, so I have been sleeping a lot, reading books, and playing Skyrim. I am blessed to have such rest and free time in my life. Thank you for this video.

[@Azurantine81]

You made me chuckle so that deserves a sub, watching this whilst playing Nolvus really demonstrates best what modding has done for us in Skyrim.

[@shieldmayden]

Nobody's asking but song at 10:21 is Colonel Bogey March Great video btw. Really impressive that you can make something out of hardly anything

[@kirishima638]

20fps? So basically the official PS3 release.

[@justasjurevicius4082]

My (exact) very first desktop, that I bought with my hard earner money, it was able to run Oldrim acceptable, and I was overjoyed with it until I upgraded

[@SanityVideo]

I remember downloading a mod just to massively lower the resolution whenever the camera moved so I could play Skyrim on my old laptop. It went completely pixilated whenever I turned around but I could play on PC and had access to mods.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Oh, a dynamic resolution scaler. That is actually pretty neat. Can it also increase the resolution when there is extra performance to spare?

[@mr.heisenberg6638]

I just discovered your channel and I already love it

[@shiyoko_shawty]

ty for this video you helped me make my Skyrim look soo much better

[@DBears1582]

Lol this is kinda informative even if i have a rtx 3050 i still prefer smoothness so thank Ill try the tips you provide here

[@Aaron-xg6dz]

You were right about cyberpunk on release, for the love of all that's holy, don't predict the downfall of elder scrolls😭

[@Mustang-fu6on]

Koubits: See, mid 20 fps rate. Disgusting. Me who plays skyrim at about 20-30 fps: ouch.

[@diannalynnYT]

I don't have the best pc and tried on the past to play Skyrim on and was so sluggish. Gave up and moved to switch. So sick of being Dragonborn and I new I could change the start so needed to figure out how to mod on my laptop. Thank you! Thank you!

[@Alte.Kameraden]

Question is did you use Skyrim SE or Skyrim LE? Skyrim LE was designed to run on 32bit systems. Skyrim SE saw many upgrades that would make it run worse on an old system like this.

[@slashdash846]

as an owner of old potato pc i can proof that it's LE

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

I've ran LE on a 2008 midrange machine back in the day. In fact, I occasionally still launch it.

[@Tattletale-Delta]

You can also use the Skyrim upscaler mod, that allows the game to use fsr/dlss/xess. Looks far better and performs better than just dropping the res.

[@tygrahof9268]

Too bad there isn't a mod to help Koubitz not die so often... Wonderful video to help the newbies of 2011.

[@Sickliff]

I don't know why I needed this, but I did

[@danaj-b9452]

Fun video!!! Glad I found you!

[@siyzerix]

I used the FSR 3 FG mod and it largely fixed the frame drops. Bonus. I just have to render 30fps and frame gen will boost it to 60fps. Downside is it takes several tries to launch skyrim properly

[@GLIEPNIR]

Well damn... I remember watching your channel around a year or so ago... Came across it again by accident. And I actually got a similar pc to that one as a gift from my mom so might as well follow the lead and make the best out of it xD

[@Granlusofc]

I really want to give this a shot, but i'm afraid of fucking something up, then going into potato settings by accident. I made that mistake once on LO, lost the entire thing since it broke the game to a collosal degree. I'll give it a look tho, vivid weathers was the highlight for me, since i thought all the weather mods were basically another cathedral weathers.

[@anotherrandomguy2386]

This is amazing I love it XD

[@machscga6238]

Can you do a similar list for Skyrim SE/AE?

[@QuadPowerful]

The Legendary Edition should run better, The Special Edition had graphics tweaks made by Bethesda that made it more demanding to run.

[@husky3g]

I bought a Dell Optiplex 5040 SFF with an Radeon R5 340 (absolutely abysmal, trash tier OEM GPU) and i5-6500 for $60 (shipping/tax included) on eBay last year. Dropped upped from 8GB to 24GB/RAM, upgraded to an i7-6700K, RX 6400 and it plays pretty much every game on low/medium settings around 40fps. The base model with R5 340 (non-X version sold in bulk to OEMs), i5-6500 and 8GB/RAM could definitely play Skyrim, just not sure of the performance to be honest. Could also be used to play some older games but it's best to just toss it in the trash and get something better. Total cost was like $160-200 with upgrades. With a little more time and patience, it CAN be achieved to play modern games on super old hardware, but $160 toward a good PC build will take you much further and honestly it's a waste of your time and money when a Steam Deck can be bought for $300-400 used/new and play everything much better.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

From my experience on even weaker hardware back in the day, it should run fine on that base version. That is oldrim, not SE.

[@FamilyGutsPeterGriffith8187]

didn't expect this video to be a performance optimization guide, but it did. thank u hahaha

[@georgeoldsterd8994]

Ah, now I can run Skyrim on my old laptop even better! Bonus points for making it look like Warband. 😁

[@johngrant4470]

Thanks!

[@Koubitz]

Thank you so much John!

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Considering Skyrim is now 13 years old, it should do just fine. In fact, back in the day I played on a Core 2 and a HD 4870, so basically 2008 hardware in 2011 Sadly the integrated Intel pgraphics even in 2015 were a bit too weak for that. And the special edition has higher requirements. And ini tweaking is a classic past time, not just lowering to get the games running on a potato, but also going past ultra. My favorite tweaks are for sun/shadow movement and view distance. Running an ENB is obviously out of the question, but ENBoost should do something. And yes, the script extender, SkyUI, the unofficial patch and static mesh improvement are basically 100% recommendations for everyone. All in all, I must say I really like how the end result looks. A bit as if Oblivion and Gothic had a baby. The visuals are a bit flatter, but the colors help a lot. I wouldn't mind if that is how vanilla Skyrim would look.

[@augustkraus1389]

Played Skyrim for years on a broken laptop. Couldnt use master level spells without crashing, no magic against other magic users or it would crash, min settings with rendering set to 0.1. the days of squalor gave me strength.

[@augustkraus1389]

Dragons?! Forget it! No main quest, sorry bud, they occupy too many exterior cells to load properly

[@anneonyme4618]

That is the exact same pc in our France school in 2024 xD

[@2xghostx2]

Oof that screen tearing *tries not to be sick* Great work though Koubitz!

[@suxdonti]

I cant think of a reason to buy another less powerful computer, but I'll find one cause I love computer.

[@MeJustMe101]

As someone who used to have a pc that could barely handle a tab, I am so glad I got a gaming pc, now I don't have to wait almost a minute to pull up a tab. But yeah, it's bad

[@prauwnsauce]

You are ON IT with this one, gettem sista.

[@Spaghetti_Universe]

For a while i was playing morrowind oblivion and skyrim on my 50$ laptop, i had to disable a lot of things however, shadows and such

[@j3pelfrey]

MODS???? What dark sorcery is this? We all know that Rupert was an easter egg put in by Bethesda. Only Todd and those kind of brilliant minds could create such an icon.

[@Sorain1]

My God it's amazing how good that looks on a literal $100 dollar 'why didn't they recycle this already!?' PC.

[@Rosemarytwigs]

you know there was one time i got like a laptop for chrismas and i installed skyrim on there via steam it took over an hour, but i got it on there now imagine if you will the bethesda logo popping up, but if someone bit-crushed it about 2 times to the point where you could probably count the amount of pixels on screen if they were highlighted but somehow its still playable, so I make a new save and the skyrim intro is the same, I think i barely got through it before I closed the game out of fear for this laptop's software and hardware looking at this tbh is nothing compared to what I've seen id replicate but that laptop is super dead, wont charge

[@PyroMarshall]

Perfection

[@Deathklaat17]

basically my starter PC cept mine was a lenovo with 4gb of ram OEMs are great beginner PCs

[@xDarnelx]

i swear this video was an ad for vivid weathers

[@karpai5427]

9:08 No! Bad youtuber! You don't install ussep! The rest of the modlist is great. I am gonna try it out. Your skyrim looks so happy.

[@ttuesdayy1]

I was really digging the vibe of the game until SMIM, i think. It was beginning a feel like a 2009ish fantasy game made by a company without the well-known 'bethesda jank'. I think leaning into the era more with the mod choices could have ended with a really nice quality retro feel. Still though, wild what mods can do with such weak hardware!

[@malakash4716]

according to color of Skyrim i think that is Skyrim SE later version , i have same PC 10 y old , spec similar to this from video AMD FX(tm)-8320 Eight-Core Processor 3.50 GHz, 8 gb ram DDR 3 on that work on 833 Hz, i have graphic card and i buy Legendary edition and i run her on FULL MAX settings ALL, if U have Low spec PC like me just buy Skyrim Legendary edition and don't even bother to set it up skyrim SE edition or later version.

[@DissidentPunk666]

i did it in legendary edition ultramodded 30 fps and it looked good

[@117johnpar]

The screen tearing is canon.

[@LunchboxFamily765]

Wow 😳😳😮😮 A 100 dollar PC not bad at all 😊😊

[@Kardall]

Pressing 1 makes it say "Special Method" FYI :P

[@ColoradoKidTV]

What is the software used to create the talking cartoon avatar used in some of Koubitz' videos? I would like to purchase it for my channel (different looking avatar, of course). Thanks. Great videos. Some of the slightly older FO4 and Skyrim mod videos have been absolutely hilarious. Thanks.

[@Kanaka101]

ive legit had that pc (still do) for 7 years and im suffering pain everyday 😭

[@Kanaka101]

well i actually had an even worse one (somehow) for 4 years and ive had this one for 3 years (still tuff)

[@RangerJosey]

Koub. Thank you! Poor mfer representation in PC gaming is non existent. This is literally how I started modding. I had to use mods to downgrade New Vegas ffs!

[@Kindred...]

My pc is almost as old as me (20) i have a dual core processor, 4gb ram and a 1gb vram gpu, and i can play legendary edition with lowest settings with about 60 fps on 800x600 resolution, i use bethini when I play with mods

[@jimboeeek]

"We. Can. Go. Lower!" An old Kouslavian proverb 🐰

[@featherfruit]

i think that hp is better than the laptop i first played skyrim on all those years ago

[@morphine334]

legit running skyrim with 400 mods on a low end laptop with 6gb ram at the moment the pain is real

[@AlexisB-gv1tk]

I remember playing on my brother's old laptop and it would barely run on low graphics

[@hammaadfahim1969]

This the exact pc im using right now to play skyrim ae 😂

[@OhShunz]

Skyrim is 78 yrs old and the pc used to create it was only $100 so u vote yes!! 🐰☀️😸

[@caligiuricallidus]

so sad i just bought my pc about 8 years ago and i said that i just want to be able to play TES 6 with it but now it took so much time that my PC almost cant play Skyrim anymore now imagine TES 6 :( need a new pc so bad

[@gerwyn8340]

Thats so cool.

[@machscga6238]

You should put full links to nexus I'm going to try and get my 300 mod mods list to work on Android Samsung Galaxy A53 5G

[@Mustang-fu6on]

Absolute madlad. Keep us updated and eat lots of cheese.

[@ljsoddities]

Im gonna buy Skyrim for PC. My MSI shiuld run it just fine.

[@Veilamia]

question about your 2 land texture mods, which one overwrites which in load order ?

[@Lord_Ralph]

$1.000 computer? Ha! That's about what I spent on the GPU alone! 🤣

[@meyers0781]

"Intel Core i5-4570" And i remember a year ago i made two decade old PC ran Windows 11 without any issues... just use Rufus boot and check the bypasses!

[@Acutedoge]

I don’t know, can I?

[@asteroidalassassin6949]

I'd hope so.

[@robdougan8944]

It actually looks good

[@Juanirva]

Vivid weathers reduced my FPS from 60 to 28 LMAO

[@zabeehtaizai2356]

just how far behind i even am with my 4gigs of ram

[@wikwayer]

very nice do the same in fo4

[@nighturnal9708]

Presses 1

[@thomasbrack9895]

Don't give Bethesda any ideas for additional skyrim releases! It's bad enough they keep updating it! 🤦🏼‍♂️

[@uqs204]

Wtf...That PC is better than the one I have now.😢

[@dlDante]

bruh that pc is better than mine

[@JAZ_2002]

Bruh I made it to like 70% completion on a ~$150 laptop at like 10 fps average so ain't no way it's not impossible xd

[@MrAzazeel]

Fucking hell i still do But not 8gigs of ram but 6 On a Dual core Though the gpu makes a bit of a difference Even still a Radeon HD 7470

[@kylehaas864]

This PC would be fine for playing Skyrim, if it had the appropriate components. First, remember that a PC is only as powerful as its biggest bottleneck. Even with regular tasks, you would be really noticing that hard drive. Second, it would be able to play Skryim well if it only had a graphics card. Even a cheap secondhand card would make all the difference here. Lastly, with Microsoft killing support for Windows 11 on older CPUs, many companies are basically giving away older PCs -- definitely would not pay 100$ for this, even if it was in great condition. As 2025 approaches, the price of used PCs will drop drastically so long as they won't run Windows 11 in a supported config.

[@McVerdict]

Now get nolvus working on it

[@bttfglive6217]

that pc is like mine exsept i actualy have a good gpu so i can run skyrim at max setings with mods i even run a modpack too.🤣🤣

[@bttfglive6217]

oh and my gpu is a gtx 1060 3gb card cpu intel i5 400gaz i have 8 gb of ram and 2tb of storage.

[@Gaertned]

prob its better than mine tho ngl

[@jesse2535]

Can't run starfield above 45 FPS on lowest settings and potato mode mods on my 1k $ mid range PC....

[@ThatLizardYouSaw]

Yes you can its what ive always used😂

[@spacedwarfbrewing2385]

Video idea find an used 710 gpu. Its for office work not for gaming.

[@lexsavage3311]

I play on a 400$ pc. the CPU is from 2016 and the graphics from 2013 XD

[@GRIMfan001]

Asus M80Tablet win 8 Intel set😅

[@EzMC2]

SCIENCE ! Ya know…

[@johnnyguitar8067]

8gb ram? More powerful than my first pc. 😂

[@BhaalSakh]

Just save for a better PC.