Hardware requirements

[coaltown992]

What would be the minimum required hardware to run a server for a game like Ark or Conan: exiles?

[Slottr]

You could get by with a really low spec machine, but it wouldnt be worth it. I'd shoot for at least like 16GB of memory and something like a 2200g?

 

You can definitely go the server parts route and look at xeons too, that hardware goes for pretty cheap.

[Dutch_Master]

Alternatively, the AMD platform may offer some solutions. A decent AM4 mainboard with Ryzen5 1600AF and 16+ GB RAM would do and won't break the bank.

[silentdragon95]

2 hours ago, Slottr said:

You can definitely go the server parts route and look at xeons too, that hardware goes for pretty cheap.

If you do, check out LGA2011-2 (X79 Chipset) CPUs. You can get 6- or 8-core Xeons for around $50 or less on AliExpress (or Ebay, depending on your location). In combination with a cheap chinese LGA2011 motherboard also from AliExpress this has the benefit of allowing you to use Registered ECC DDR3 memory, which can be found really cheap on the used market. Keep in mind though that this setup wouldn't really be power efficient at all which probably matters if you're planning to run the thing 24/7. You might also need a GPU, at least for the initial setup.

 

The more sensible, albeit slightly boring route would certainly be something along the lines of a Ryzen 3 2200G/3200G. This would obviously be more power efficient and has the added benefit of being a lot more versatile if you ever want to use it for anything else than being a game server. My 2200G machine was originally supposed to become a simple NAS server and has now turned into more of a general purpose living room PC that happens to also run a file server on it

[Jarsky]

We used to run an ARK server on a VM that just had 4 cores (old Xeon) & 8GB assigned, ran just fine.  Used to have about ~12-15 players at a time