Building a minecraft server in a closet and the heat and power consumption struggles that come with it

[whyisluistaken]

Hello everybody,

 

So I've been getting pretty tired of always having to pay for minecraft servers to play on with friends recently. I still have an old mid-range gaming PC laying around and i really want to use it as an always on minecraft server. I might run a few VMs on it later but not for now.

The CPU is an i5 4460, motherboard's a H81M-K. Its got 16GB of Ram, a sata SSD and a GTX 750TI. Oh and I think there's a 600W PSU in it.

I think I'm definitely gonna take out the GPU, since it consumed a lot of power and I don't need it in a server.

 

So, I have a few questions and Id be really happy if anyone could help me out:

-Can I put this built in an empty closet or is it going to overheat? The reason being that it's the only place with ethernet (there's already a network switch in that closet) and i wont be hearing the fan noise.

-How much power is it gonna consume? Is there a way to make it more power efficient? Energy is pretty expensive here (30cents/kWh) so I'd be happy if the server consumed like 10watts at idle and 45-60 under load. Is that possible with the CPU I have? I know that it has an 84Watt TDP but I don't think a minecraft server is gonna max out all cores.

-Is there a way to make windows enter sleep mode at say 3am and power back on at 10am? That would save me a lot of power I hope.

-Lastly, how much bandwidth is a minecraft server gonna use per player? My internet's about 100down/35up.

 

Thanks a lot in advance guys!

Have a nice day,

Luis

 

 

[Kanna]

Okay so I would have it in better airflow maybe it the closet is open with a fan pointing out air or something and it might get dusty af. You could make the server auto shut off and then make windows go to sleep after set minutes of idle (or set up in event scheduler) your internet should be able to do it might so some small issues depending how many players you have on

[NelizMastr]

10w idle isn't going to happen with a 4th gen i5. You should consider it to be closer to 50W, with all components and then you need to compensate for power supply inefficiency.

The higher wattage PSU you have, the less efficient it will be at very low power usage. You're better off with a gold rated 400w unit or even less. Otherwise, I'd say you're looking about 70% efficiency on your current PSU, which means you're pulling 30% more power from the wall than your parts actually consume. 

[Windows7ge]

Depends on the size of the closet. If the door has grills for allowing air to flow in/out you can probably get any with it. If not the closet will be noticeably warmer than any other room.

 

This system will never be as efficient as 10W. I'd estimate it's going to pull around 50~65W idle and go up from there. If you have a job even at 30¢/kWh that won't amount to a whole lot. I wouldn't worry about it.

 

If the system supports Wake from RTC you can make the system shutdown completely and start up again on that time schedule.

 

I can't accuracy answer that question but given its only tracking basic player data like location, what they're doing, etc, unless you're hosting to A LOT of people it shouldn't use very much bandwidth at all.