Gaming Server build for 16-20 Gamers

[indie.demon]

I am an undergraduate Computer Science student from India and am planning to start a gaming lounge as a startup. I have been battling with the idea of using a server to run as a gaming rig for about 16 to 20 systems at any particular time, or just use the same number of individual PCs, for a while now.

 

I haven't been able to decide on the specifications yet and I cannot find any good enough information out on the interweb, that is why I have come to the one place where I know this kind of stuff has been done in the past. Truth be told, I have a feeling that virtualisation at this high level probably cannot be done and I would like to reach out to the whole forum to please put forward their ideas for this unique build. I am open to all suggestions.

 

Regards,

Indie

[That_PC_Kid]

I don't know anything about servers but I know that you will need to spend thousands of USD let alone whatever your currency is for a 16-20 person gaming server.

[COUPER MILLAR]

 

4 minutes ago, That_PC_Kid said:

I don't know anything about servers but I know that you will need to spend thousands of USD let alone whatever your currency is for a 16-20 person gaming server.

Linus did something similar to this with 7gamers 1 pc.  The final cost was something like $30,000 us.  So you might think it's cheaper,  but 7 decent gaming pcs is are not going to be anywhere near that.  

[Hunter06]

yup server gaming rig will cost way more than buying individual pcs. plus all pc parts have problem or fails at some point. if u build a server gaming lounge ur whole business will be on hold if a single parts fail

[Streetguru]

17 minutes ago, indie.demon said:

 

Ya, naw, really bad idea to have everything tied into one machine.

 

You'd be better off seeing what AM4 APUs offers, then you get a bunch of low power machines that can be ITX, or better yet just attached to a self made rack of some kind that should be able to do e-sports titles fairly well, which is like the whole point of the lan center at this point. should be out in a few weeks, you're mostly going to just want fast RAM

Then sometime later this year Ryzen APUs come out which would give you a boost on the CPU and GPU side of things for the same low power package

[tt2468]

5 hours ago, indie.demon said:

I am an undergraduate Computer Science student from India and am planning to start a gaming lounge as a startup. I have been battling with the idea of using a server to run as a gaming rig for about 16 to 20 systems at any particular time, or just use the same number of individual PCs, for a while now.

 

I haven't been able to decide on the specifications yet and I cannot find any good enough information out on the interweb, that is why I have come to the one place where I know this kind of stuff has been done in the past. Truth be told, I have a feeling that virtualisation at this high level probably cannot be done and I would like to reach out to the whole forum to please put forward their ideas for this unique build. I am open to all suggestions.

 

Regards,

Indie

Don't do it. It will be way more expensive than just buying normal pcs.

[leadeater]

10 hours ago, tt2468 said:

Don't do it. It will be way more expensive than just buying normal pcs.

@indie.demon

Not just this but it won't work. Game streaming, thin clients, VDI etc all of these are terrible for multi user gaming deployments just don't do it.

 

Just buy cheap computers with mid range parts and use 1080p screens, this is perfectly fine people will be happy to use them and it'll 100% work.

[Pixel5]

i just want to point something else out here since others already answered the question.

 

If you are a student for computer science and you dont know the answer to this very basic question and the giant issues you gonna run into if you try to do this you should probably NOT try to build a business on this idea.

 

Let alone the budget you will need, if you want to stand out you need top of the line hardware so you are looking at $50k easily just for computers, monitors and peripherals not accounting for desks, chairs and a place to put all of this stuff.

[Mikensan]

Regarding the above statement.. in the U.S. Computer Science is usually a programming degree, not infrastructure / virtualization / engineering. I imagine in India Computer Science is also more of a programming degree. I couldn't tell you a thing beyond Pascal or Java, so I don't expect somebody who writes in .net or C# to have any idea about this world. Fortran anyone?

 

I would suggest a slight mix of ideas... buy your gaming rigs but pxe boot their operating systems. Windows Deployment or Clonezilla can do this for you. Save yourself a lot of time and money by giving the computers a fresh image every reboot. If you centralize anything, then make the steam library central so the desktops can pull games from a local server rather than the internet every time. Try to store as much bulk data locally as possible (updates/games/whatever) to save cost on your ISP (assuming metered and possibly slow).

[dalekphalm]

2 hours ago, Mikensan said:

Regarding the above statement.. in the U.S. Computer Science is usually a programming degree, not infrastructure / virtualization / engineering. I imagine in India Computer Science is also more of a programming degree. I couldn't tell you a thing beyond Pascal or Java, so I don't expect somebody who writes in .net or C# to have any idea about this world. Fortran anyone?

 

I would suggest a slight mix of ideas... buy your gaming rigs but pxe boot their operating systems. Windows Deployment or Clonezilla can do this for you. Save yourself a lot of time and money by giving the computers a fresh image every reboot. If you centralize anything, then make the steam library central so the desktops can pull games from a local server rather than the internet every time. Try to store as much bulk data locally as possible (updates/games/whatever) to save cost on your ISP (assuming metered and possibly slow).

Do you know how long it takes to boot from a PXE image? If it takes more than a few minutes, I would suggest instead, looking at something like Deep Freeze (by Faronics) - we use them at work for our public computers (~50 PC's). It's also very popular at Colleges and Universities.

 

What Deep Freeze does, is allow you to "freeze" the state of a computer, once it's configured in the way you'd like.

 

It does this by redirecting all writes to the HDD to a cache file, which is deleted upon reboot. Reboots don't take any longer than normal. It protects against users changing settings or deleting files, and offers some protection against viruses (Some viruses can defeat it, but it's certainly a nice extra layer of protection - best used in conjunction with an actual AV software).

 

You can then unfreeze ("thaw") the computer when you'd like, periodically, to do updates, etc. This can also be controlled remotely from a server.

[Mikensan]

@dalekphalm Guess I didn't use the correct terminologies or miscommunicated, just meant have it on schedule to re-image the machine via pxe every night, not boot from a network drive. However Deep Freeze certainly achieves the idea I was going after  Have been out of the loop for anything desktop related in many moons.

 

One thing I love about these forums is the crossroads of information gained from each unique environment/experiences.

 

 

[ChalkChalkson]

On 2/18/2017 at 4:52 PM, indie.demon said:

I am an undergraduate Computer Science student from India and am planning to start a gaming lounge as a startup. I have been battling with the idea of using a server to run as a gaming rig for about 16 to 20 systems at any particular time, or just use the same number of individual PCs, for a while now.

 

I haven't been able to decide on the specifications yet and I cannot find any good enough information out on the interweb, that is why I have come to the one place where I know this kind of stuff has been done in the past. Truth be told, I have a feeling that virtualisation at this high level probably cannot be done and I would like to reach out to the whole forum to please put forward their ideas for this unique build. I am open to all suggestions.

 

Regards,

Indie

Remember the terror of entropy. The more power you stick into a smaller space the hotter it will get, no matter how good your hardware is. Meaning that it will always be cheaper to go with multiple systems just because the engineering for a single more powerful chips is exponentially harder. 

What you could do is running something like octacore with hyperthreading, use 4 threads for a VM host, and 4 each for 3 VMs. this saves you quite a bit of silicone and should* be cheaper than getting 3 dualcores with hyperthreading after ryzen comes out. 

Could also be a good option to get refurbished PCs when starting