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Author Topic: More Or less Cores for Game Servers?  (Read 3911 times)

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Accessless

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More Or less Cores for Game Servers?
« on: March 20, 2017, 11:38:12 AM »
I've been wanting to put together a little server rig for a little while now for a better experience on the games that I love. I have never gone to the trouble though as up until recently I thought that I would require the latest i7 or beefiest Xeon CPU, which of course made it prohibitively expensive. I've come to realise though that most, if not all; dedicated game servers are single threaded. So I should only need a CPU with high single thread performance correct?

To that end I've come up this imaginary rig:

Intel i3-7350K
Asus H110I-PLUS (Mini-ITX)
7600 RPM 1TB HDD
32GB DDR4 SDRAM
Random disc drive out of a draw
>250W PSU
Mini-ITX case

This all came in at a cost of ~£600. But is the RAM necessary? I've seen many reports saying that more than 8GBs of RAM on most computers is pointless. If I could get this going for even less then it would most certainly seem like a better upgrade path than a new Ryzen CPU +everything else needed #compatibility whoop!

In case you are curious game servers would consist of:
- 7 Days to Die
- Minecraft
- Space Engineers
- etc (basically multiplayer sandbox games for 2-4 people)

Geek-9pm


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Re: More Or less Cores for Game Servers?
« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2017, 12:38:15 PM »
Minecraft ?
Realty, I don't know.I don' t thunk it matters.
How much research have you already done?
What did you think of this?
What's the best laptop for a child ... who plays Minecraft?

DaveLembke



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Re: More Or less Cores for Game Servers?
« Reply #2 on: March 20, 2017, 01:01:24 PM »
2 to 4 people connected 32GB is likely overkill. 8GB should be plenty for 2 to 4 players. I havent hosted any of these specific game servers, but other games that are multiplayer that I served up were mainly memory and hard drive intensive vs CPU intensive. I have yet to see a game server that is CPU intensive as for the calculations and rendering is all mainly done at the client side, and the server just maintains the data juggling between all who are connected which you want to make sure you have a very good network connection to avoid latency.

My one friend hosted Minecraft server on a Pentium 4 computer and it all worked ok for 3 people playing connected all with broadband to his home server in Kentucky. This was years ago with the original minecraft server. I know its gone though a bunch of updates since and a Pentium 4 might not cut it with the latest private server of it.

There should be spec info online for all of these on suggested specs for serving them up. I am unable to search for that info with internet connection i have right now with limited search ability. I am thinking the Core i3 should be plenty. The 32GB is likely overkill and 8GB is probably a better choice for memory.

BC_Programmer


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Re: More Or less Cores for Game Servers?
« Reply #3 on: March 20, 2017, 01:13:33 PM »
Overall, You don't need a new or recent system to run game servers. an older system is usually quite capable of a reasonable server experience. I've used my T3200 based Dual Core laptop for running a Minecraft server back when I worked on GriefPrevention for testing changes, and it worked well enough. I used my Q8200 based Quad Core system for running the actual build server for our entire company and it kept up admirably, and that was far more load than it would ever see as a Game Server.

if you want to do a separate build for it, you likely don't need the latest processors. The latest Xeons and i7's are pricey but you could go back a few generations. If you go back far enough you can find Xeons and even Dual-Socket motherboards for cheap. (But don't go back too far because while they get cheaper you are suddenly in single-core territory, like with Socket 604)

For example, there are Haswell-based Xeon chips available for only about 20-30 dollars more than the i3 you've listed. UNlike the i3 though you might be able to find an affordable dual-socket motherboard for it as well, specifically for use as a server.

For RAM, if you are running all of those you would definitely want more. This goes particularly if the Minecraft server is "modded" in some way. I use -Xmx8G just for my Single Player Modded setup for example, just to be safe.

Otherwise, If you are only running one at a time and switching, then you could probably do fine with 16GB. But of course then t here is shutting down the old game, starting the new one, etc. and if the server is headless you need to do that through RDP and it's a pain.




I was trying to dereference Null Pointers before it was cool.

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Re: More Or less Cores for Game Servers?
« Reply #4 on: March 20, 2017, 05:59:30 PM »
People seem to be getting the wrong impression here, I only plan on running one server at a time. I have an old Athlon 64 6400+ (not sure what ram I've got, will have to dig through the spares box), or alternatively an old laptop; however I would say that it was considerably slower than the aged Athlon.

I ignored it as a possibility after seeing that the i3 had twice the performance score (probably more overall)


I plan on testing the old rig as a server, I'm just pondering what a modern miniature power saving server should be made of.