Play BuildUp on older and less powerful PCs

Lower distances and fewer visual effects can reduce BuildUp's graphics load without changing machines, recipes or your saved world. This is an optional profile: choose the settings that suit your PC. It does not establish a guaranteed frame rate or prove that the pack is playable with 8 GB of total system memory. 16 GB is a more practical target; the CPU, graphics chip and size of the factory in view still matter.

Establish a comparison first

After starting, wait until the loading bar has completely disappeared. Record your existing values or take screenshots of the settings pages. Compare changes at the same position and viewing angle, both outdoors and at your factory. After joining, let the chunks finish loading. One FPS reading during loading is not a reliable comparison.

If only the image stutters, the graphics settings below may help. If machines, animals and block breaking also respond late on a multiplayer server, the server team needs to investigate separately. Lower graphics quality does not repair slow server ticks.

A lighter graphics profile

Open Options → Video Settings. BuildUp uses Sodium with Sodium Extra and Reese's Sodium Options. The arrangement depends on language and menu layout; use these option names to find the controls.

Setting	Suggested value	Visible trade-off
Render Distance	6–8 chunks; start at 8	You see less far; more distant mountains, buildings and terrain are hidden.
Simulation Distance	5–6 chunks in singleplayer	Animals, farms and machines outside the active area stop updating unless something else keeps their chunks active. Check your automation.
Graphics	Fast	Simpler visuals, including leaves.
Clouds	Off	No clouds.
Entity Shadows	Off	No round shadows beneath characters and animals.
Particles	Decreased	Less smoke, fewer sparks and other effects.
Entity Distance	50–75%	Animals, players and other entities disappear at shorter distances.
Max Framerate	For example, 60 FPS	Limits unnecessary high frame rates; does not raise a frame rate already below the cap.

On a multiplayer server, the server controls simulation distance. Your local slider does not replace its setting. Render distance still reduces your rendering work there; the server's limit also bounds the distance you can see.

Keep Sodium's Use Block Face Culling, Use Fog Occlusion and Use Entity Culling enabled. They are already enabled in the checked configuration, as is the optimisation that animates only visible textures. This profile does not require driver or compatibility overrides.

Sodium Extra provides switches for individual animations and particles. Start with Particles: Decreased. Avoid disabling all particles at once: effects can communicate hazards, projectiles or machine state. Keep Item Frames, Armor Stands and Paintings enabled so that your decorations remain visible.

Dynamic lights and factories

LambDynamicLights: Set Dynamic Lights to Off if you need more performance. A torch in your hand will no longer light up the surroundings; placed light sources keep working. The corresponding value in config/lambdynlights.toml is mode = "off".

Create/Flywheel: For large visible Create factories, try lightSmoothness = "TRI_LINEAR" under [flw_backends] in config/flywheel-client.toml. Use "FLAT" for a stronger simplification. Lighting on moving parts looks less smooth. Keep backend = "DEFAULT" and automatic worker thread selection unchanged.

Mekanism: If pipes and cables are expensive to render, enable Opaque Transmitters. Their contents are replaced visually by solid outer faces. In config/mekanism/client.toml, this is opaqueTransmitters = true under [accessibility]. Under [rendering], you can set berRange = 64. Multiblock contents and some animated parts then appear at shorter distances. The machines continue working.

These suggestions affect rendering. They do not make machines tick less often on a server. In singleplayer, world simulation shares your hardware with graphics; factories in permanently loaded chunks can consume resources even when you are looking elsewhere.

Sound and minimap

Sound Physics Remastered calculates reverberation and sound occlusion. If stutters occur particularly when many sounds play, try Enable Sound Physics: Off. In config/sound_physics_remastered/soundphysics.properties, this is enabled=false. Ordinary game sounds remain; spatial reverberation and muffling through walls are disabled.

XaeroPlus: Enable Minimap FPS Limiter and set Minimap FPS Limit to 20–30. The map moves less smoothly but is redrawn less often. This limits only the minimap, not the game's frame rate. Find these options among the XaeroPlus map settings.

Startup, memory and background use

Lower render distance mainly helps gameplay and joining a world. It does not skip mods, models or recipes during pack startup. Run BuildUp from an SSD if available and close memory-heavy programs before starting. Integrated graphics also uses part of your system memory.

Do not allocate all of your PC's RAM to Minecraft. The operating system, launcher and graphics need memory too. If the system is swapping memory to disk, a larger Java allocation does not automatically help. The installation guide explains the launcher's memory preset; a reliable profile for a PC with only 8 GB total memory still needs a separate test.

If your BuildUp version includes Dynamic FPS, it can reduce resource use while the window is inactive or in the background. It does not promise higher FPS during active gameplay.

Revert settings and report problems

Start with graphics settings, then try lighting, sound or one factory option if needed. This makes it easier to identify which change helps your PC. Restore any slider to the value you recorded earlier to undo a change.

For the configuration files above, fully close BuildUp, copy the relevant file before editing, and change only the listed values. Restart the game afterwards. To revert, close the game and restore your own saved copy. Do not delete whole configuration directories or remove content mods as a performance test.

If stutters continue, tell the team your BuildUp version, CPU, GPU, total memory, Java memory allocation and the situation: startup, joining, travelling or a particular factory. A comparison at the same viewing angle with the settings you tested is more useful than a single FPS reading.