Help Me Build A Small Server

[Kris_Kid]

I'm going to build a small server to run dedicated games of cs, black mesa, etc and I need some build suggestions I want to try to keep the budget low

[leadeater]

Have a look on ebay for Intel S5520HC ($120-$180US) motherboards, Intel L5630 ($6US ish) CPU's and Samsung DDR3 ECC Registered RAM (or Unregistered if you want cheaper and need less than 24GB per CPU). All these are very cheap on ebay and there are even combo deals.

 

Stick with the series L5600 CPUs as they only use 40W each for the common ones versus 80W+ of the E5600/E5500/X5600/X5500, you can use a single CPU in a dual socket botherboard.

 

I use these myself and they are great performers and support all the virtualization features required.

[The_Denks]

20 minutes ago, Kris_Kid said:

I'm going to build a small server to run dedicated games of cs, black mesa, etc and I need some build suggestions I want to try to keep the budget low

Gmod TTT server?

 

(if so can I be admin plz)

[Kris_Kid]

Just now, UberGamerKing said:

Gmod TTT server?

 

(if so can I be admin plz)

Sure if you give me a good pcpp list ?

[SLAYR]

24 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Have a look on ebay for Intel S5520HC ($120-$180US) motherboards, Intel L5630 ($6US ish) CPU's and Samsung DDR3 ECC Registered RAM (or Unregistered if you want cheaper and need less than 24GB per CPU). All these are very cheap on ebay and there are even combo deals.

 

Stick with the series L5600 CPUs as they only use 40W each for the common ones versus 80W+ of the E5600/E5500/X5600/X5500, you can use a single CPU in a dual socket botherboard.

 

I use these myself and they are great performers and support all the virtualization features required.

That completely unnecessary. Source engine games take nothing to run, get any computer made inthe last ten years, you can get them to run off of a pentium 4, with a 1gb of ram, and it will be able to host a server, network speed is the main issue.

 

Also source engine servers are heavily singlethreaded, so multithreading will not help.

 

[leadeater]

19 minutes ago, SLAYR said:

That completely unnecessary. Source engine games take nothing to run, get any computer made inthe last ten years, you can get them to run off of a pentium 4, with a 1gb of ram, and it will be able to host a server, network speed is the main issue.

 

Also source engine servers are heavily singlethreaded, so multithreading will not help.

 

True but for $6 a CPU and reasonably low power and fairly modern chipset there isn't much out there that is a better deal. The Motherboard is a little overkill I agree but I can't think of any off the top of my head so went with what I knew . Any X58/S5520/S5500 board will do just fine with those CPUs.

 

What makes it a good deal over a slightly newer desktop chip/CPU is the core count with HT, you can just run each game server as a VM and have room left over for stuff not yet even considered. There are even very high clock speed variants of these Xeons for around $40US but at the cost of power draw.

 

I also generally find desktop used parts comparatively much more expensive on ebay than used Xeons/server parts due to the share volume that exists of them. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with an overkill solution so long as the price is right and there are no glaring downsides like high power draw which isn't a problem when using low power L series Xeons.

 

I also don't agree with always buying new for something like these personal game hosting servers, the amount they get used and price you pay for them isn't that justified.

[Mikensan]

The games themselves might not be multi-threaded but the OS and everything around it is. Not to mention if you start running mods you'll want a little extra RAM.

 

I think getting what leadeater put together for around $200-$300 is a very good solution. You could use it for Plex as well as game servers ^_^. I think actually buying a P4 or even a Core2Duo / Core2Quad is a waste of money - if you have it great but I wouldn't buy it.