Tips on opening a Internet Gaming Cafe

[rakesh]

Linus and Team/Others,

 

With your experience of owning an office with 20 or more PC and doing regular maintenance. Could you do a video or give tips on this forum for someone who wants to open a cyber Gaming cafe.

1. Pro's and Con's.

2. How many PC's are required as a minimum to start one ?

3. Minimum PC config ?

4. How often should PC be upgraded

5. Maintenance overheads and so on ? 

 

Appreciate if anyone can help out on this.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Depending how how much IT experence you have Id set it up on AD(active directry) so that you can have the systems reset with every new user. You can also have all the files in the home directory stored on a server so that if they change systems it will keep all their files and settings.You can then lock it down so they can't touch anything, and if there all the same system you can easily reimage it if there is a problem. 

 

For upgrades and systems id buy around 600 dollars pcs and then upgrade them when you can't play games at 1080p min, depending on budget. People aren't there to have the best graphics, there there to play with others and have a good time. 

 

Also lock the cases with a padlock and make a bios password

[LogicalDrm]

I'd say minimum 10 pc's as a start. So you could have CSGO match going in there. System should be rather basic thing and you can cheap out on RAM (8gigs of anything), use only non-K i5 and some not-so-special chipset. GPU should be able to run games at high specs 1080p imo. I would come to play if PCs were better than mine. Upgrade cycle would be 2-3 years. That pretty much how long good GPU lasts. CPU is maybe 5 years.

 

I've been in one gaming cafe few times. It was kinda nice and I wished there would have been one closer (before I has money to put my current rig together). I would suggest getting few consoles and console games too and have them in some corner.

[Yahtadi]

I had some though. Would you all mine if i get in the line?
I am willing to make 20 pc line up each other for Internet cafe bussines
Pc spec 450$ max:
http://pcpartpicker.com/list/kKQLhM

Are those spec enough/would be okay to run.. Lets say (24x7) x 365, with maintenance once a month?
 

[Ventus51701]

Have a fridge full of soda and energy drinks along with some snacks and an easy way to order from the local pizza or fast food resturant without having to leave you desk would be nice. You can choose wheater or not you want to charge for snacks or have them as complementary items. Make sure your chairs are comfortable, and each person has enough desk space to play comfortably, and provide ok headsets and rent out premium ones for an additional cost. Go for pcs that cost somewhere in the range of $500-$800. I would reccomend to wait for the amd rx 400 series of graphics cards, as if their performance is as good as amd says, then their cost to performance will be amazing. Also, i'd reccomend a amd cpu, as usually their cost to perfomance ratio is better in lower end computers. Make sure you overclock a bit, as an amd is basically pointless if not overclocked. Cheap out on ram, as it doesn't really affect performance too much so 8 gigs of DDR3. Buy simple cases, try to find ones that arent too crappy looking around sub 50 should be good. Buy some small capacity ssds as you won't really require mass storage. Try and go for a motherboard sub 90 that is reliable and has ok overclocking. You can either go with the reference cooler, but maybe a hyper 212 evo would be nice as they only cost around $30. Have very long ping internet, and worry about speed less if gaming is the main purpose. Make sure you turn the ac down, as that'll give your computers and easier time. Make sure no one plays for too long that they have a bloodclot and encourage people to rest for a bit every 2 hours.

[Kristofer Vesi]

thanks for tips, in estonia there is none, looking foward of doing it

[Kristofer Vesi]

* not taking count the exact cpu and gpu numbers, quite old

[RagingTyphoon]

I remember spending my whole weekend in the Cyber Café in Japan, each cubical had a phone, desk and either a lazy boy, or a chair and cot, setup. You could order food and drinks and you paid for a timeslot, they had some old beater pc's but everyone just brought there laptops and use the LAN. Cant beat high speed net, privacy, food and drinks to order. 

[SCHISCHKA]

you can do the math on what % of occupancy you will require to pay off your hardware and save for further investment. 1/3 staff wages (including yours), 1/3 investment back to the business, 1/3 taxes; pretty simple formula. People go to internet cafes for the social atmosphere more than because they cannot afford a computer themselves. They also go for the internet access with their laptops. Get the cafe part right first. When I look at local businesses the conventional cafes look more prosperous than the dingy basements full of computers 

46 minutes ago, Rasmus A K said:

thanks for tips, in estonia there is none, looking foward of doing it

You should be able to run profitable LAN competitions if there is no competition

[Praesi]

Where  do you  live? In GER Gaming Cafes are dead for Years.

[mad dudy]

this thread is so old, OP made this thread and logged back it.