Game on a server

Erfurt · December 21, 2013

Hey guys,

Can you install games on a server, and play them on a gaming rig? I believe that it should be possible to do this. To my logic if the server and the gaming rig, is connected with a gigabit connection, it would work like you have a 125 MB/s HDD. And the server would just act like a HDD, it's just over the network, and not in the rig. What I don't really know, is if it's the server or the gaming rig, that determinate the quality of the game? And I don't even know if it's possible, but it should be. I mean if I can watch movies on my gaming rig from my server, wouldn't that be the same thing, or am I totally wrong here?

The reason why I ask this is because I would like to have 'less' hardware in my rig, to reduce some noise. I'm using some HDD's for storage on my Gaming rig, and a SSD as boot drive. Would be nice if I could take my HDD's and put them into the server instead.

nsyedhasan · December 21, 2013

Yes, it would work but there maybe some problems with loading times and delay in loading.

wpirobotbuilder · December 23, 2013

There are absolutely no problems with doing this. This actually can be beneficial if you don't have space for a RAID configuration in your rig, you can create a redundant volume on another storage rig.

Sequential performance will be no problem, but if the game does lots of random reads to load then you might notice a bit of a slowdown. Linus Media Group uses a SCSI drive running over their network to hold their games (from what I've heard watching videos), but you don't have to have SCSI, you can use a regular Windows share (CIFS).

Erfurt · December 23, 2013

There are absolutely no problems with doing this. This actually can be beneficial if you don't have space for a RAID configuration in your rig, you can create a redundant volume on another storage rig.

Sequential performance will be no problem, but if the game does lots of random reads to load then you might notice a bit of a slowdown. Linus Media Group uses a SCSI drive running over their network to hold their games (from what I've heard watching videos), but you don't have to have SCSI, you can use a regular Windows share (CIFS).

Thanks for your reply, but I think I will get a 1 TB 2.5" HDD for the time being, another reason why I wanted to play games over my server was so that I could have more room for some watercooling rads, but with the Fractal Design Arc Midi case, I have room for 2x2.5" drives on the back, and I may just do that instead, but not completely sure yet. Only thing is that 2.5" drives are a bit more expensive than 3.25", but performance should be about the same, at least that's what I have seen after a bit of research.