CPU: Intel(R) Core™2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
GPU: MSI NVIDIA GeForce GT 710 2GB VRAM
DISK: HDD 250 GB
RAM: 4 GB
Hi and welcome to the forum 
Probably, depends on what else you want to use it for, I guess you want to run some applications on it to.
some applications and maybe 2 games
Your specs are above the minimum system requirements
It should not be a terrible experience.
If you are worried about performance and want to squeeze the most out of your hardware a lighter option could work better. Try it and see I’d say
For reference: In my experience with a laptop that has lower specs then the one you listed using gnome + minecraft was not terrible, but not pleasant either.
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Smoothness of gnome is largely dictated by your graphics card. You have a dedicated gpu, so it should be quite comfy.
4Gb ram means that if you are multitasking, you’ll run out at some point. Gnome takes about 600Mb, browser 1,5-2,5Gb, so that leaves you with about 1Gb of breathing room before you are going to need swap, which will make everything slow. So, like any desktop with 4Gb, browsing while gaming will not lead to good experience. But otherwise I would expect it to run smoothly.
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When you run it on your PC, run it on the highest priority.
I have similar specs, although a bit slower CPU and a bit more RAM (8GB). (GPU: GTX 930M, but also 2GB VRAM.)
I can report that Gnome runs fine. But I agree with the solution that RAM might become an issue. If it does, maybe try XFCE (even though I don’t like the look of it either) as it runs a lot lighter.
Big piece of advice that I only recently found out: if you use the default settings of the driver and use the Intel/Nvidia-prime driver, none of your applications will be run using your GPU. You have to edit their .desktop entries or launch them with prime-run in order to use your GPU. (It took me a year of using Manjaro before I figured this out.)
For instance: prime-run firefox
Otherwise it will just use your built-in Intel GPU (if it exists) to save energy. Delegating tasks to your GPU saves both RAM and CPU.
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