Recommendations for a cheap server PC?

[Sir Dude]

Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this, I couldn't find anything that fit.

I'm running a modded Minecraft server on a home PC I have set up in another room. I launched the server today and made a bit of an event out of it. The problem is I'm running the server on a 10 year old machine that my friend literally pulled out of a dumpster. It handled a vanilla server with many people just fine in the past, but this modded server is proving to be just a bit too much. So I'm looking for a cheap upgrade, the thing is though I'm not very well versed in older hardware and I already overspent on a new gaming rig, so I'm really not trying to break the bank here.

I'm currently running an AMD Athlon II 64x X2 Dual Core processor and 8 GB (4x2GB) of DDR2 memory. I'm using a new 1TB HDD, but I'm okay with getting a small SSD if it makes the server run faster.
I'm looking for something that has at least 4 cores, 8 GB of memory, and is preferably under $300. I understand if this is a stretch, but I'd appreciate it if someone can at least point me in the right direction. Many thanks!

[Somerandomtechyboi]

7 minutes ago, Sir Dude said:

Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this, I couldn't find anything that fit.

I'm running a modded Minecraft server on a home PC I have set up in another room. I launched the server today and made a bit of an event out of it. The problem is I'm running the server on a 10 year old machine that my friend literally pulled out of a dumpster. It handled a vanilla server with many people just fine in the past, but this modded server is proving to be just a bit too much. So I'm looking for a cheap upgrade, the thing is though I'm not very well versed in older hardware and I already overspent on a new gaming rig, so I'm really not trying to break the bank here.

I'm currently running an AMD Athlon II 64x X2 Dual Core processor and 8 GB (4x2GB) of DDR2 memory. I'm using a new 1TB HDD, but I'm okay with getting a small SSD if it makes the server run faster.
I'm looking for something that has at least 4 cores, 8 GB of memory, and is preferably under $300. I understand if this is a stretch, but I'd appreciate it if someone can at least point me in the right direction. Many thanks!

You might be able to overclock your current system via bios or maybe even via pin modding

[Somerandomtechyboi]

For your current goal of 4 core cpu

 

Search for an optiplex 380 or 780

 

Once you have found an optiplex

 

Optiplex 380 : buy two 4gb 1600 ddr3 sticks, buy a q6600, bsel mod q6600 for 3ghz

 

Optiplex 780 : buy four 2gb 800mhz ddr2 sticks, buy a xeon e5450/x5450, download setfsb and slowly raise the pcie to 115 and fsb to around 450 for the oc method cause q45 is basically g43 which can oc to around 450 on the fsb

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Servers and NAS

[NelizMastr]

On 7/3/2021 at 1:58 PM, Somerandomtechyboi said:

For your current goal of 4 core cpu

 

Search for an optiplex 380 or 780

 

Once you have found an optiplex

 

Optiplex 380 : buy two 4gb 1600 ddr3 sticks, buy a q6600, bsel mod q6600 for 3ghz

 

Optiplex 780 : buy four 2gb 800mhz ddr2 sticks, buy a xeon e5450/x5450, download setfsb and slowly raise the pcie to 115 and fsb to around 450 for the oc method cause q45 is basically g43 which can oc to around 450 on the fsb

That’s all ancient hardware though and not really an upgrade. Might as well pop in a Phenom II X4 as they smoke the Core 2 Quads and won’t necessitate a board or PC swap. 
 

I’d go for something like an Optiplex 3020. Haswell is much newer, faster and power efficient. They can be found with 8GB and a Core i5 for well under $200. Run the server off a cheap SSD and you’re set. The HP ProDesk 400 G1 and G2 also qualify and can be had for even less.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 minute ago, NelizMastr said:

That’s all ancient hardware though and not really an upgrade. Might as well pop in a Phenom II X4 as they smoke the Core 2 Quads and won’t necessitate a board or PC swap. 
 

I’d go for something like an Optiplex 3020. Haswell is much newer, faster and power efficient. They can be found with 8GB and a Core i5 for well under $200. Run the server off a cheap SSD and you’re set. The HP ProDesk 400 G1 and G2 also qualify and can be had for even less.

The pricing depends on the local market

 

And i thought the phenom ii cpus performed similarly to the c2q cpus, will phenom ii x6 outperform a first gen core i7 or xeon x34xx series?

[NelizMastr]

3 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

The pricing depends on the local market

 

And i thought the phenom ii cpus performed similarly to the c2q cpus, will phenom ii x6 outperform a first gen core i7 or xeon x34xx series?

Phenom II can hold its own to a Core 2 Quad Extreme. The overclockability of the i7 and nehalem/westmere Xeons are a good bit faster.

 

Still, I’d go as modern as possible within the budget. Cores don’t matter much as minecraft is single threaded mostly. Haswell is the best middle ground between a good price and excellent performance, while also keeping power consumption at bay.

[Sir Dude]

@Somerandomtechyboi@NelizMastr I've had one hell of a week and I lowkey forgot I made this post, lol. I'm kinda understanding what's being said here but some of these terms are getting a little over my head. Could you send some shopping links, like Amazon or Newegg? I'm used to speccing a computer if I have a specific CPU picked out, but I just don't really know where to start with these.

[NelizMastr]

5 hours ago, Sir Dude said:

@Somerandomtechyboi@NelizMastr I've had one hell of a week and I lowkey forgot I made this post, lol. I'm kinda understanding what's being said here but some of these terms are getting a little over my head. Could you send some shopping links, like Amazon or Newegg? I'm used to speccing a computer if I have a specific CPU picked out, but I just don't really know where to start with these.

This type of stuff will have to be bought off eBay, Craigslist etc. as they're used computers, not new.

[VectorTech]

So here is what I would recommend, it would be pretty cheap overall and would be able to handle a lot more than just the minecraft server.

• Intel Xeon E5-26xx V1
  • These CPU's can be found for very cheap on ebay ($40-70), have low voltage models and support up to 8/10 cores with hyper threading.
• Micro ATX X79 Motherboard
  • These Mobo's often made by Chinese companies are also super cheap, coming in around $80-100, support the CPU's and 2-4 sticks of RAM
• 2x8GB DDR3 ECC
  • Faster than your DDR2 currently, also super cheap ($30) as people are selling off old servers left and right
• 128GB SSD
  • Super cheap literally anywhere and will act as a nice fast place to store all the files for your Minecraft instance.

[aBattleBorn]

On 7/3/2021 at 2:31 PM, Sir Dude said:

Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this, I couldn't find anything that fit.

I'm running a modded Minecraft server on a home PC I have set up in another room. I launched the server today and made a bit of an event out of it. The problem is I'm running the server on a 10 year old machine that my friend literally pulled out of a dumpster. It handled a vanilla server with many people just fine in the past, but this modded server is proving to be just a bit too much. So I'm looking for a cheap upgrade, the thing is though I'm not very well versed in older hardware and I already overspent on a new gaming rig, so I'm really not trying to break the bank here.

I'm currently running an AMD Athlon II 64x X2 Dual Core processor and 8 GB (4x2GB) of DDR2 memory. I'm using a new 1TB HDD, but I'm okay with getting a small SSD if it makes the server run faster.
I'm looking for something that has at least 4 cores, 8 GB of memory, and is preferably under $300. I understand if this is a stretch, but I'd appreciate it if someone can at least point me in the right direction. Many thanks!

you can buy cheap mobo+cpu+ram combo on aliexspress, it is a second hand server hardware that is what i did for my home server and my office server,give me a shootout if you are interested and need help

[Somerandomtechyboi]

On 7/6/2021 at 9:34 PM, VectorTech said:

So here is what I would recommend, it would be pretty cheap overall and would be able to handle a lot more than just the minecraft server.

• Intel Xeon E5-26xx V1
  • These CPU's can be found for very cheap on ebay ($40-70), have low voltage models and support up to 8/10 cores with hyper threading.
• Micro ATX X79 Motherboard
  • These Mobo's often made by Chinese companies are also super cheap, coming in around $80-100, support the CPU's and 2-4 sticks of RAM
• 2x8GB DDR3 ECC
  • Faster than your DDR2 currently, also super cheap ($30) as people are selling off old servers left and right
• 128GB SSD
  • Super cheap literally anywhere and will act as a nice fast place to store all the files for your Minecraft instance.

Mc cares about single core not multicore

 

Get a scrap chinese x99, e5 2637 v3, and some cheap ecc ddr4 2133 or 2400 off aliexpress

 

Do a turbo unlock bios mod and maybe unlock some settings while you are at it with amibcp, so your cpu will run at its max boost clock on all cores

[VectorTech]

4 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Mc cares about single core not multicore

 

Get a scrap chinese x99, e5 2637 v3, and some cheap ecc ddr4 2133 or 2400 off aliexpress

 

Do a turbo unlock bios mod and maybe unlock some settings while you are at it with amibcp, so your cpu will run at its max boost clock on all cores

While yes minecraft prefers a single faster cores to many slower cores you can utilize a variety of different minecraft server balancers to spread out your worlds and take advantage of the many cores you have. He can also virtualize the servers and be able to run more than just an instance or two of minecraft.

[Pixel5]

i would get an i3 10100 for your use case, high single core performance and very cheap to buy.