Server Building Hardware

[papathegreat]

Me and my buddies are wanting to get a server going to host various games and we're wondering the cost effectiveness of building one vs renting one.
How good of hardware would you need to run a server? Is it based off of the game you are running or can I buy an older second hand computer on the cheap and run most the games we'd want?

The games are
- ARK 

- Valheim

-7 Days to Die

-Project Zombie
-Factorio
-Minecraft
-Scum
-Space Engineers
-Terraria 
-Mount and Blade Warband
-Cod Servers
 

[voyager_]

It's based off of the game, so you will need to look through the server requirements of those games and how many players that you are looking to have accessing and if they will be playing different games at the same time. Game servers tend to be memory hogs and favor faster core clocks rather then threads. Most tend to be designed for single or just a couple of threads. You will also need to consider you internet connection and will this system be able to be hardwired and on a UPS? while the data going to and from the server isn't massive you'll want as little latency as possible between the client and the server. This is why ping times make such a big difference in games. I run a minecraft server on one of my machines for my wife and brother and each world with no mods needs about 2-3gb of Ram to be stable. When Loading new sections of the world it will peg the CPU to 100% on 1-2 cores for a few seconds while it builds. I haven't run a factorio server but I do play (it becomes an addiction, have you warned your friends? they will think about their factories all day! and night! the sad thing is I design plants for a living.) but I would assume it would be along the same lines as minecraft if not worse considering how much is happing at once even with a single player.        Cost of buying vs renting if network and power is not an issue really depends on your region. Rough estimate my two servers running 24x7 cost me about $10-15 a month. Pc parts right now are all over the place but between ebay and facebook market place you can still find some good deals on hardware. You may want to consider splitting servers between different peoples houses if you want to be able to run all of them at one time. 

 

 

Sorry, to make it short.... More information is needed about recommeded server specs for those games and how many players, connections speed + LATENCY.