Minecraft LAN Server

[Greenish]

So here is the deal, I am in 8th grade and I am fairly good friends with the tech guy at our school. Now we use our laptops ALOT and I wanted something to do with my friends in lunch and in free periods. Thus I tried to run a Minecraft LAN server off my laptop. It was working fine until my laptop couldn't handle it and everyone latency spazzed out. So I went up to my tech guy. He let us use other parts from unused school computers to put them into one computer under 2 rules,that we didnt tell anyone what we were doing (i am anonymous on here) and he could play on the server. We were successfully running it with 3 people on with 4GB of RAM, until I checked the console and found out that it was skipping ticks, WE NEEDED MORE RAM!!! So we found another PC to move over to  with 4 DIMM Slots instead of 2. Now we were running on 16GB of RAM. But long story short, it wont boot we are in the midst of figuring out why. My friends who are helping us set it up agreed that we would all chip in to buy a separate server if we cant get the PC working. So here I am, I am looking to build a server with 16GB of RAM (preferably DDR3) atleast 4 cores (6 or 8 would be ideal), I already have a spare GPU lying around. So we are looking for a 

• CPU (I was thinking Xeon)
• CPU cooler (idk something silent that can run 24/7)
• Motherboard
• RAM (if the mobo and cpu need ram other then ddr3)
• Storage
• GPU
• Case
• Power Supply

It is running on Linux if anyone want to know.

We are trying to run it as cheap as possible so ebay is very useful

We are in Australia so please make sure it can ship here.

 

Thank You in advanced!

If you want the IP to the server once we have setup port forwarding let me know!

[Greenish]

Note: We may be hosting other games other then minecraft, dependant on if the proxy allows it, so we want to make it future proof.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Look for a cheap X58 motherboard(those are easy to find on Ebay), and something like a Xeon X5650(also really cheap on Ebay, around $20 a pop). Hyper 212 Evos aren't too loud from what I know. If you can find a server tower in a usable condition, those are somewhat easy to upgrade on(server hardware is cheaper than consumer hardware, especially with motherboards).

 

For power supplies, I'd look at a Corsair CX450M, you shouldn't need much more than 450W. Although if you're upgrading in the future, you may want 550-650W.

 

 

As far as getting the current PC working, if it works with the 4GB of memory, I'd guess you may have inserted some dead RAM when upgrading it to 16GB.

[BobVonBob]

More threads does almost nothing for a Minecraft server. What you want is a higher clock speed. An i3 will run a Minecraft server just as well as an i9 if they have the same clock speed. My suggestion would be to buy an old 4690K system, or a 4790K if you want to run other games on it as well.

[Greenish]

3 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Look for a cheap X58 motherboard(those are easy to find on Ebay), and something like a Xeon X5650(also really cheap on Ebay, around $20 a pop). Hyper 212 Evos aren't too loud from what I know. If you can find a server tower in a usable condition, those are somewhat easy to upgrade on(server hardware is cheaper than consumer hardware, especially with motherboards).

 

For power supplies, I'd look at a Corsair CX450M, you shouldn't need much more than 450W. Although if you're upgrading in the future, you may want 550-650W.

 

 

As far as getting the current PC working, if it works with the 4GB of memory, I'd guess you may have inserted some dead RAM when upgrading it to 16GB.

Thanks for the help.

Because the system we were running on only had 2 DIMM slots we had to change to a seperate system so we are not sure if its the ram or the mobo.

I will put together a part list. 

As I am currently at school and I am on a student account I cant access ebay but I will forward this message on to the tech guy so he can search around on ebay.

I asked him earlier and he sent me this https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com.au%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F273467692329

Does that seem good?

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, Greenish said:

Thanks for the help.

Because the system we were running on only had 2 DIMM slots we had to change to a seperate system so we are not sure if its the ram or the mobo.

I will put together a part list. 

As I am currently at school and I am on a student account I cant access ebay but I will forward this message on to the tech guy so he can search around on ebay.

I asked him earlier and he sent me this https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com.au%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F273467692329

Does that seem good?

It seems sketchy, but that's not a bad CPU though. The lack of product image is turning me off from that specific listing.

[Greenish]

Just now, Crunchy Dragon said:

It seems sketchy, but that's not a bad CPU though. The lack of product image is turning me off from that specific listing.

Yeah I am going to contact the guy, if I pay via PayPal i should be able to get a refund if I dont get the product

[Greenish]

8 minutes ago, BobVonBob said:

More threads does almost nothing for a Minecraft server. What you want is a higher clock speed. An i3 will run a Minecraft server just as well as an i9 if they have the same clock speed. My suggestion would be to buy an old 4690K system, or a 4790K if you want to run other games on it as well.

I mean, if we are going to have a lot of people on the server more cores will definitely help. As far as I know it was the RAM causing the lagging and the processor was fine, we were using an i5 at 2.7GHz. But I will definitely take a look into high clock speed CPU's though 

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, Greenish said:

Yeah I am going to contact the guy, if I pay via PayPal i should be able to get a refund if I dont get the product

Definitely see about that other system though, it may be you just need to source memory or a motherboard.

 

9 minutes ago, BobVonBob said:

More threads does almost nothing for a Minecraft server.

This is true, although the extra cores are nice to have especially when trying to do other things with the system(such as hosting other servers).

 

Another important note for Minecraft servers @Greenish: 8GB memory is the recommended minimum, 4GB is the absolute minimum. Each player(if they're not close to each other) will require 200MB of memory(if they're close by, the server groups them together), and you still need memory for the OS and the world. 4GB could probably sustain a server of 2-3 people, but I wouldn't risk going any higher than that without adding more memory.

[Greenish]

3 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Definitely see about that other system though, it may be you just need to source memory or a motherboard.

 

This is true, although the extra cores are nice to have especially when trying to do other things with the system(such as hosting other servers).

 

Another important note for Minecraft servers @Greenish: 8GB memory is the recommended minimum, 4GB is the absolute minimum. Each player(if they're not close to each other) will require 200MB of memory(if they're close by, the server groups them together), and you still need memory for the OS and the world. 4GB could probably sustain a server of 2-3 people, but I wouldn't risk going any higher than that without adding more memory.

Yeah, we are running Bukkit so it would need quite a bit of RAM. We are going to use 16GB of DDR3 RAM lying around. As far as I know Linux pails in comparison the Windows with RAM usage so we should be good with 16GB and a 6/8 core

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 hour ago, Greenish said:

Yeah, we are running Bukkit so it would need quite a bit of RAM. We are going to use 16GB of DDR3 RAM lying around. As far as I know Linux pails in comparison the Windows with RAM usage so we should be good with 16GB and a 6/8 core

That sounds good. Yeah, Linux uses quite a bit less RAM than Windows does, that's why I'm gonna use it for my server once I get that running.

[Greenish]

22 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

That sounds good. Yeah, Linux uses quite a bit less RAM than Windows does, that's why I'm gonna use it for my server once I get that running.

Pogchamp. We ended up getting the 4 stick module working so that is EPIC!!! I will post it on completed builds once its all setup

[Alef]

On 2/27/2019 at 9:41 PM, Greenish said:

I asked him earlier and he sent me this https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com.au%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F273467692329

Does that seem good?

I would avoid that cpu, while it may be powerful it's designed for multi socket systems, often quad cpu's. Which won't helpful with minecraft unless your running many servers. Also good luck sourcing a motherboard for that.

[imreloadin]

3 minutes ago, Alef said:

I would avoid that cpu, while it may be powerful it's designed for multi socket systems, often quad cpu's. Which won't helpful with minecraft unless your running many servers. Also good luck sourcing a motherboard for that.

Agreed, LGA 1567 motherboards are pretty rare and when they do pop up they usually come with a price premium.

[myselfolli]

On a side note, you don't need a GPU to run a minecraft server. Is your (Linux-) server headless?

 

If so, skip the GPU entirely and log in via SSH

[Greenish]

10 hours ago, myselfolli said:

On a side note, you don't need a GPU to run a minecraft server. Is your (Linux-) server headless?

 

If so, skip the GPU entirely and log in via SSH

I have a quadro 4000 lying around so if we end up building the server, the quadro has no other use. But as for the PC we are currently running, we have an old radeon card in it, and because we are allowed access to all the old school computers, there is no reason we dont really need one.

[Tundral]

@Greenish I'm sorry but  @Crunchy Dragon recommendations are bad and some claims are wholly untrue. I have quite a bit of experience in hosting Minecraft servers and know what works and what doesn't. 

 

Let me correct some stuff in this thread:

On 2/28/2019 at 4:35 AM, Crunchy Dragon said:

Xeon X5650

On 2/28/2019 at 4:35 AM, Crunchy Dragon said:

X58 motherboard

Don't get an X58 MoBo or an X5650 CPU. This stuff is almost 10 years old so worn out and outdated. The chips are 32nm so they'll consume more power in relation to the performance. And they will suck balls in terms of performance for MC at least because again the X5650 CPU is old so the single threaded performance won't be that good and MC thrives on good STP. On top of not having good STP it also has a pretty low boost clock.

 

If you want way way way better performance than any X58 server system just buy a second-hand gaming PC with a recent CPU (3rd gen I5 or better / AMD Ryzen) and you're set. And this won't just benefit Minecraft, it'll be better for almost any game hosting since all games like higher IPC and STP way more than higher core count.

 

On 2/28/2019 at 4:41 AM, Greenish said:

Does that seem good?

NO! It's old and crummy and not even worth its cheap price nowadays

 

On 2/28/2019 at 4:35 AM, Crunchy Dragon said:

you may want 550-650W

Unless you're going to be actually stressing the GPU or running a lot of hard drives in the server system even a 450W PSU is way overkill for a system with a modern CPU (<150W)

On 2/28/2019 at 4:46 AM, Greenish said:

if we are going to have a lot of people on the server more cores will definitely help.

It might help if you're going to be running servers for other games but a Minecraft server will barely use more than 4 cores and the gameplay experience will not be enhanced by having a higher core count system. 

 

On 2/28/2019 at 4:46 AM, Greenish said:

As far as I know it was the RAM

even 2GB of usable RAM for the MC server should allow for 10-15 players easily. I think it's probably the hard drive being slow.

 

On 2/28/2019 at 4:47 AM, Crunchy Dragon said:

4GB is the absolute minimum.

I've run a Minecraft server on a VPS with 2GB of total memory (for Linux and the MC server) and it could easily support around 10 players and run fine, even if they were in completely different areas of the world. 

 

 

Unless you absolutely need to have the system in the LAN (because of a firewall or such) I'd use shared hosting or rent a VPS or something. If you need to have the system in the LAN I'd recommend you make sure your CPU is the highest clock speed and most modern architecture your budget will allow apart from that you should have an SSD drive for fast world loading and around a gigabyte of usable memory per 12 people simultaneously online on the server.

 

If you need more help with hosting a Minecraft server I'd recommend asking the Spigot (what bukkit is nowadays) forums for advice since they're way more knowledgeable about the requirement of an MC server (and won't recommend a horribly outdated and unfit CPU for you to host on).

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, Tundral said:

@Greenish I'm sorry but  @Crunchy Dragon recommendations are bad and some claims are wholly untrue. I have quite a bit of experience in hosting Minecraft servers and know what works and what doesn't.

Jeez, I forgot about this thread.

 

Thanks for correcting me

[Ravenbear]

Thanks to all that helped the OP, you helped me a lot as I am looking to set a server up and host my domain. Thank you.