what work does a server do?

[waggythegeek]

I know that for a rendering computer, you want cores and threads. For a gaming computer, you want good graphics. What do you need for a storage server? How about a game server?

[DarkEnergy]

CPU is important for a gaming computer too.

For a storage server you need storage.

For a game server you need, generally a good cpu, decent amount of memory, and internet speed.

[Blebekblebek]

it depends on what kind of games

but overall, it need stable connection

 

if the game is server sided (client just streaming) then it need powerful CPU power to process all interactions between other players and the enviroment

ex: most MMORPG, facebook games.

[Eniqmatic]

For a pure storage server, generally the requirements are quite low, however depending on the file system, some will need lots of RAM and some will require a RAID card. I would also suggest a couple of NIC's with link aggregation to allow multiple users to access at once and not be slowed down. All of this is dependant on the environment and should be tailored to suit obviously. 

 

Game servers as mentioned usually just need a decent amount of RAM and CPU, along with bandwidth. Once again, depends on the game!

[Beltboy]

I know that for a rendering computer, you want cores and threads. For a gaming computer, you want good graphics. What do you need for a storage server? How about a game server?

Not as simple as that, for storage: better cores/threads will allow more users to access/search at once; more ram will mean better searches generally as more of the index can be cached in memory; High network speeds for transfer rates; and the storage it's self you need to consider speed, and volume. A high end SAN server will have a mixture of SSDs for fast access storage, and HDDs for large long term storage.

 

Gaming servers will depend very much on the game they are hosting. Something like a mine craft server, is just storage of what blocks are where and tracking all the players, NPCs follow very simple rules. An MMORPG server will need more processing power as it will have to process actions for hostile and freindly NPC's track huge numbers of players, complete with complicated stats, inventory, quest logs; Combat is calculated on the server which by the nature of an RPG means random number generation.