ark dedicated server requirements.

[Pandora]

so i want to make an ark dedicated server for me and a few friends like 10 people. 

i have been looking for hardware requirements and i have not found anything too concrete.

 

i was wondering if i could use an older system i had to host it.

 

its pretty low power rocking an i3 2120 and 4 gigs of 1333 ddr3 and a 120gig ssd. 

 

anyway i was hoping i could get your thoughts on the matter. 

[ToasteeTester]

I've been reading around and I think it's doable.  

 

I have an old laptop with an i3-2367m, 16 GB of ddr3, and a 240 ssd.  I have 30 Mb/s upload and 70 Mb/s download.  I'm going to try it tonight.  

 

If you tried it and it worked, would you let us know?

[SLAYR]

http://ark.gamepedia.com/Dedicated_Server_Setup

 

Needs at least 6gb of ram.

 

And make sure the server has a LAN connection, with ten people you may have network bottlenecks because home internet connections are not meant to handle the amount of data  that needs to be transmitted, it may cause lag, fps drops, or stuttering that gets worse as more people join.

 

Some internet providers don't allow for servers on home internet connections, and it does involve changin router settings.

[Pandora]

wow this is some late replys,

i was able to run it reliably with 8 gigs of ram on an i3 2120 and an i5 750 with power to spare.

 

the trick is to run it with the fastest ssd you can. i ended up upgrading to raid 10 120gig ssd's 

[ToasteeTester]

Thanks for letting us know.  

 

Mine worked, too.  

 

The ARK Survival Evolved Dedicated Server system I set up runs good, but it hasn't been tested with a lot of players or anyone with a 4k setup - just me and my 2 kids (3 total) on LAN with 1080p!  I routinely see it needs at least 6-9 GB of ram to start, which is more than what I've seen on some posts.  However, when I look at task/performance manager it indicates that the machine is using much more overall and when everyone is on - up to 14.5 GB.  The good news is that the laptop hosting the server uses only 12 watts with the lid shut - still can't believe it!    

 

CPU seems to stay pretty consistently at 25%.  

 

LAN speed has not been an issue, but I see how it easily could be on a home setup.  I did not connect cat 5 - it is a wireless machine hosting the server.  

 

I second that the SSD speed is very important to keep the server running smooth and for the client, too.  On the server, the SSD hits with some spikes, but it doesn't get taxed the way it would if it were an HDD.  They seem to be frequent spikes, but the SSD seems to handle it.  Though, on the client side, for example, I cheaped out on one of the set-ups and used a 7200 rpm drive.  The drive is hitting 100% on task/performance manager.  This causes an i5-6600k with a gtx 1080 and 8 GB DDR4 to stutter a lot.  The other two clients are running on SSDs with i5-3300 / gtx 960 SC 4GB / 8GB DDR3 and an i7-6700k / gtx 960 SC 4GB / 8 GB DDR4 and work fine - until they run out of memory and crash (100s of dinos, structures, bases, Chrome open, etc.).  

 

When I do it over, with some more money, I would recommend the following on the client side:  

1. 16 GB DDR3/4 fastest you can get (all the clients I have are hitting or are very close to maxing out on 8 GB ram - it works, but 16 GB would be better)
2. i5-i7 (3000 series or later) (doesn't seem to be CPU bound at all)
3. SSD (lots of use on the drive and the files are huge - ~45GB+)
4. GPU
   1. GTX 1060/equivalent - Medium
   2. GTX 1070/equivalent - High
   3. GTX 1080/equivalent - High/Ultra
   4. Titan P/equivalent - Ultra (My theory is that this game needs more than 8 GB VRAM to run smooth on Ultra)

KIM this is for 1080p not 4k.  

 

I'm continually surprised at how skimping or bottlenecking hits hard on this game.

[Pandora]

On 10/2/2016 at 1:37 AM, ToasteeTester said:

Thanks for letting us know.  

 

Mine worked, too.  

 

The ARK Survival Evolved Dedicated Server system I set up runs good, but it hasn't been tested with a lot of players or anyone with a 4k setup - just me and my 2 kids (3 total) on LAN with 1080p!  I routinely see it needs at least 6-9 GB of ram to start, which is more than what I've seen on some posts.  However, when I look at task/performance manager it indicates that the machine is using much more overall and when everyone is on - up to 14.5 GB.  The good news is that the laptop hosting the server uses only 12 watts with the lid shut - still can't believe it!    

 

CPU seems to stay pretty consistently at 25%.  

 

LAN speed has not been an issue, but I see how it easily could be on a home setup.  I did not connect cat 5 - it is a wireless machine hosting the server.  

 

I second that the SSD speed is very important to keep the server running smooth and for the client, too.  On the server, the SSD hits with some spikes, but it doesn't get taxed the way it would if it were an HDD.  They seem to be frequent spikes, but the SSD seems to handle it.  Though, on the client side, for example, I cheaped out on one of the set-ups and used a 7200 rpm drive.  The drive is hitting 100% on task/performance manager.  This causes an i5-6600k with a gtx 1080 and 8 GB DDR4 to stutter a lot.  The other two clients are running on SSDs with i5-3300 / gtx 960 SC 4GB / 8GB DDR3 and an i7-6700k / gtx 960 SC 4GB / 8 GB DDR4 and work fine - until they run out of memory and crash (100s of dinos, structures, bases, Chrome open, etc.).  

 

When I do it over, with some more money, I would recommend the following on the client side:  

1. 16 GB DDR3/4 fastest you can get (all the clients I have are hitting or are very close to maxing out on 8 GB ram - it works, but 16 GB would be better)
2. i5-i7 (3000 series or later) (doesn't seem to be CPU bound at all)
3. SSD (lots of use on the drive and the files are huge - ~45GB+)
4. GPU
   1. GTX 1060/equivalent - Medium
   2. GTX 1070/equivalent - High
   3. GTX 1080/equivalent - High/Ultra
   4. Titan P/equivalent - Ultra (My theory is that this game needs more than 8 GB VRAM to run smooth on Ultra)

KIM this is for 1080p not 4k.  

 

I'm continually surprised at how skimping or bottlenecking hits hard on this game.

the client side is buggy as hell and with an 980ti i couldnt play with good settings and framerates at 1440p. i would love to test this game with a r9 fury x or something because my theory is that this game benefits from video ram speed more then core speed.

server side is buggy also but its easily mitagated with more ram and better storage. 

my conclusion is that the cpu used really does not matter as long as it can use very fast memory. (no ddr2 please) for the server

and the client side needs at least a quad core to be consistent (i3 also counts).

 

as for video card i dont want to give numbers until i test my theory on vram speed.

[HigherFlyer]

On 9/15/2016 at 3:11 PM, ToasteeTester said:

I've been reading around and I think it's doable.  

 

I have an old laptop with an i3-2367m, 16 GB of ddr3, and a 240 ssd.  I have 30 Mb/s upload and 70 Mb/s download.  I'm going to try it tonight.  

 

If you tried it and it worked, would you let us know?

I got an ark server running on my old macbook pro 2012 version it has a trashy 2 core 2.5ghz intel apu with intel 4000 graphics and 8gb of ram the game is installed on an hdd and I have it wired into the router. Surprisingly the server is extremely smooth ram never goes above 50% while cpu stays below 25% the computers fans don't come on (The fans run and it gets hot on the menu screen but not on the server hosting screen) Me and my friends put it through stress test building giant bases and spawning in titans and it still held up extremely well! No lag whatsoever even with all that cpu usage still didn't go above 30% I'm running it on a dual boot system in windows. Honestly I didn't even think ark would even launch on that old laptop! It might be good to note that we have only had one person on so far, so expect ram to go up but everything else seems like it would stay the same.

[Pandora]

On 7/27/2019 at 4:13 PM, HigherFlyer said:

I got an ark server running on my old macbook pro 2012 version it has a trashy 2 core 2.5ghz intel apu with intel 4000 graphics and 8gb of ram the game is installed on an hdd and I have it wired into the router. Surprisingly the server is extremely smooth ram never goes above 50% while cpu stays below 25% the computers fans don't come on (The fans run and it gets hot on the menu screen but not on the server hosting screen) Me and my friends put it through stress test building giant bases and spawning in titans and it still held up extremely well! No lag whatsoever even with all that cpu usage still didn't go above 30% I'm running it on a dual boot system in windows. Honestly I didn't even think ark would even launch on that old laptop! It might be good to note that we have only had one person on so far, so expect ram to go up but everything else seems like it would stay the same.

what i found was that plugins wreck this game. and while performance in game stayed consistent and CPU usage never rose we found that with lower power processors with more people online weird bugs would occur more frequently.

things like body bags not appearing, dino bodies not appearing, mobs not spawning, player owned dinos disappearing/despawning.

 

currently im running this game in an i5 4460 with 16 gigs of ddr3 at 2133mhz and my problems have somewhat disappeared.

 

the other thing i changed was i moved to a raid 10 ssd setup.