7 best Minecraft 1.20 shaders for low-end PCs

Shaders rank among the most popular Minecraft mods of all time, promising a complete overhaul of various visual elements within the game, such as textures and lighting. While these features are desired by everyone, the performance of many players' systems often limits their ability to enjoy popular shaders designed for high-end systems.

Recognizing that a significant portion of the Minecraft playerbase lacks high-end gaming systems, the modding community has developed shaders optimized for decent systems. In this article, we will explore the top seven shaders that can provide playable frame rates on lower-spec PCs.

Disclaimer: This listicle is subjective, and the ranking is based on the writer's opinions.

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Minecraft Shaders for budget PCs

To use shaders in their game, players will need to install Optifine or the Iris shaders mod. With that requirement in mind, here are some of the best lightweight shaders for PCs:

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7) Chocapic Toaster Edition

Chocapic Toaster Edition shader in Minecraft 1.20 (Image via Mojang)

Many players with entry-level systems often avoid well-known shader packs like Chocapic since they are very demanding. However, a lot of them may not be aware that Chocapic shaders have a dedicated 'Toaster Edition' specifically designed to accommodate slower PCs.

Despite its lightweight design, this version offers a range of impressive features, such as dynamic shadows and significant enhancements in overall lighting, greatly improving the gameplay experience for users with less powerful hardware configurations.

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6) MakeUP Ultra Fast

This is a must-try shader pack for players who do not know how well their systems can handle shaders as it comes with multiple different presets ranging from very low to high settings.

Players can mess around with different preset values to find what looks the best on their setup while keeping the game playable.

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5) Builder's QOL Shaders

A savanna village with Builder's QOL Shaders (Image via Minecraft)

Builder's QOL Shaders has long been a popular choice among Minecraft players seeking lightweight shaders. While it delivers excellent performance on low-end systems, this shader pack also offers a custom sky with realistic clouds.

Designed for budget systems, this shader pack doesn't come with an abundance of features. The water reflections are somewhat realistic, but users should remember to disable water blur to explore underwater areas clearly while using this shader.

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4) Sildur's Enhanced Default

Sildur's Enhanced Default with Fancy preset (Image via Mojang)

As the name implies, this shader primarily enhances the vanilla game by incorporating specific visual features. After installing this shader, players will immediately notice visual enhancements such as realistic water, dynamic lighting, and shadows.

This shader introduces a handful of lightweight features to the game, resulting in minimal impact on the average frame rate while significantly improving graphical quality. A notable feature of this shader is its inclusion of two presets: Fast and Fancy.

Shader Pack settings (Image via Mojang)

If a user's system is struggling to maintain satisfactory FPS values with the Fancy preset, they can switch to the Fast preset to swiftly improve the game's performance and smoothness.

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3) Lagless shader Lite version

Lagless shader (Image via Mojang)

Lagless shaders were developed to enable players with extremely low-end systems to enjoy Minecraft with improved quality compared to the vanilla experience.

Within the shader pack configuration screen, players will find the option to easily enable or disable various features, such as waving leaves and raindrops.

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2) Tea Shaders

Tea shaders with default preset (Image via Minecraft)

Tea shaders are perfect for Minecraft players looking to enhance the vibrancy and liveliness of their colorful builds. This shader introduces vibrant lighting and reflections, albeit with a slightly reduced performance impact.

Notable features of this shader include wavy grass and leaves, realistic oceans with waves, and FXAA.

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1) Potato Shaders

Cherry groves biome in Minecraft 1.20 with potato shaders (Image via Minecraft)

The name speaks for itself: this shader is specifically designed to enable computers with such low specifications that users might jokingly refer to them as "potato PCs" to run shaders. When players enter a world with potato shaders installed, they will quickly notice the subtle motion blur in their game.

This shader doesn't include sharp shadows or stunning light reflections, making it compatible with a wide range of systems. While it may not offer an abundance of features, whatever features it does have are highly customizable through the settings.