Minecraft server machine

[Thi]

I plan on building my own server machine for hosting a modded Minecraft server (maybe use it as a NAS as well but not right now), my budget is around 200 USD, I can bump that up to 300 if needed, what specs should I aim for? I want it to be a Windows machine since I'm more familiar with the OS. I expect around 10 players max at once and around 30 mods at max.

[Nuzicx]

Windows requirements will add GB to ram requirements, but your preference is understandable and not that impactful on small scale. On the cheap: I would aim for 8GB, that should cover it, go for DDR4. Any 128GB NVME should do, SSD's are alright, OS 20-64gb, minecraft upwards of 20gb or larger depends how big world ends up over time, and this communicates with backups (an example of a 20gb world with 5 hourly, 2 daily, 4 weekly backups could total like 50GB incremental style, starting point for lower requirements is a few days of daily backups, if your playing you'll catch the error, maby chuck in 1 or 2 hourly backups). CPU requirements for the game are low, so at the cheap end aim for first generation DDR4 CPU's like the i7-6700K or AMD 1700X.

AMP is a GUI game server management, will make it an easy install with mods, free version will meet your needs https://cubecoders.com/AMP

Second Hand market will be best bang for buck, consider replacing the storage if its old, check smart statistics with crystal mark.

Bandwidth for 10 players is 10Mbit/s, each way, upload and download. Please note bandwidth saturation impact on latency-sensitive tasks.

[manikyath]

first things first, only home host for your direct friends, i presume 10 people is just that.

 

the usual ramble aside, especially for modded servers what you're looking for is single core performance, anything that is off the main tick thread is not gonna add up to make any impact compared to what is on the tick thread as long as you have a few cores.

on that note, 30 mods is nothing these days. i have more than 30 mods loaded in my supposedly vanilla instances.

 

4-ish year old decommissioned office computers make a great option, as long as they have a somewhat decent CPU (none of that "actually mobile chip" nonsense), 16GB RAM, and an SSD.

[Thi]

1 hour ago, manikyath said:

first things first, only home host for your direct friends, i presume 10 people is just that.

Now that you mention, I plan on using remote.it instead of port forwarding (dunno how to config it and remote.it works fine), and the server will be its own machine, will this cause any security vulnerability to the local network? I plan on opening this to my friends and friends of friends.

[manikyath]

1 hour ago, Thi said:

Now that you mention, I plan on using remote.it instead of port forwarding (dunno how to config it and remote.it works fine), and the server will be its own machine, will this cause any security vulnerability to the local network? I plan on opening this to my friends and friends of friends.

if you would be worried having them over for a barbecue, you probably shouldnt. but as long as you trust your friends to vouch for their friends it's all good.

 

and it's not so much the worry of someone trying to access your local network trough the server, it's mostly an issue of people with bad intentions actually being capable of causing serious interruptions in your ISP's infrastructure if someone with the means decides to have ill will against you.