Media/minecraft server specs

strumpusplunket

strumpusplunket

strumpusplunket

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Once I get new components together for a new HTPC, I'm thinking of re-purposing my current HTPC into a home server.

I'm thinking it will be:
  • Media server for the whole house
  • Sickbread/Couch Potato box
  • Possibly Own Cloud/Seafile server
  • Also would like to be able to let the kids host a minecraft world that a couple of their friends could join (total 2-5 players)

The components I have currently are:
  • Gigabyte GA-M78GM-SH2 AM2+/AM3 board
  • Athlon X2 7750
  • 3GB DDR2 (PC2-6400)
  • Mechanical OS and storage drives

I could easily drop in a better CPU if I'd need it (thinking an Athlon II X2 250 or Phenom II X2 550 or similar). I'll also get a second 2GB stick of PC2-6400 and ditch the 1GB stick currently in there.

Would this set-up suffice for what I want? I've tried searching for Minecraft server requirements but can't find anything relating to the specific specs I'll have. I understand I'll be quite limited by my crappy upload speed (1mbps) anyway, but hoping it will be enough for just one or two players from outside our home network.

Just hoping this will work without me having to shell out for new board and RAM as well as CPU...
 
Yes, I wonder about power consumption, and was initially thinking of one of the lower power Athlon IIs, like the 45W 255e. However, looking at reviews there didn't seem to be any notable difference in system power draw at idle between that and the 95W chips. Big difference at load, of course, but then I thought it will only be at load quite rarely.

Have I got something wrong there? It is there a cheapish system that would do the job I want at appreciably lower power draw?
 
A microserver would be perfect for this kind of thing.

I have one running server 2012, sabnzbd+, sick beard, couch potatoe, plex media server and it never misses a beat.

I cannot imagine a mine craft server needing much juice for a couple of users.
 
Yeah, it was the minecraft aspect I was concerned about with respect to CPU power. I thought it could actually take a bit of processing grunt to serve worlds smoothly? Again, I could be completely wrong about that...

Also, I'm quite happy for this just to be a cheap stopgap until I have more cash for a more power efficient sever (since I can get it running with only a £25 outlay for the CPU).

Unless power consumption is going to be horrendous for a 24/7 machine, I'd be okay with leaving it going for a few months at most. If that's the case I guess I was more concerned with whether this would have the ability to run a decent (if small) minecraft server. From what you're saying it sounds like it will, even if it's more power hungry that is ideal. Based in that I might have to reconsider the lower power chips and look into under-volting as well.
 
Have a look in the MM at some second hand i3 systems. A hyperthreaded i3 would give plenty enough grunt to smoothly run a minecraft server whilst not being immensely power hungry.
It's performance would be leaps ahead of the microservers and would be way more than adequate for the rest of the serving options needed.
 
Steveocee said:
Have a look in the MM at some second hand i3 systems. A hyperthreaded i3 would give plenty enough grunt to smoothly run a minecraft server whilst not being immensely power hungry.
It's performance would be leaps ahead of the microservers and would be way more than adequate for the rest of the serving options needed.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'd really like to avoid having to spend on a whole new setup if possible. I'm buying parts for a new htpc so could do with keeping the expense of this down.

If it will do what I want without being completely horrible for power use I'm happy to stick with it until maybe Easter.

ci_newman said:
Your upload speed is going to be the bigger limitation on running a Minecraft server
Click to expand...

Yes,I am a bit concerned about this. I was hoping that just for a couple of external players it won't be an issue, but I really didn't know, and I can't find any information on this because everyone who is asking questions on various other forums wants to run servers with far more players. Can't find any guidance on what would suffice for three or four with only one or two outside our network.
 
Ah, that's really helpful, thanks.

So looks like it would be good for hosting up to three players. I'm assuming that's not going to include players within the home network, but even if it did three would be okay.

Ok, looks like this set of specs would do what I want albeit whilst being a bit more power-hungry than I'd ideally like. I can live with that for a few months, though. I'll go for the lower power Athlon II for now I think instead of the higher clock speed ones, and will look at cheaper low-power i3 set-ups later on.

Cheers.
 
I've not much experience in the other aspects but as someones whos hosted multiple minecraft servers. If its vanilla minecraft you would be fine, Vanilla requires to have a decent game play 2ghz dual core cpu with hyperthreating (The 1.8 update uses HT for loading world chunks and more background processes.) the RAM might be an issue as with your current setup it'll be limited to 1gb and this can really inpact on the performance, to have a smooth minecraft you need to be able to put atleast 2+ for even small players otherwise you'll see chunk errors, crashes and general 'lag' (Block lag in terms of placement, movement, dimension move, etc etc.)
 
Ah, I was really hoping someone with experience of running a Minecraft server might pop in, so thanks.

I've just ordered a 2GB stick of DDR2 of the same make as the 2GB stick already in there, so I'll have 4GB RAM. I hope that will suffice.

On the CPU side, needing HT would obviously point to an Intel chip, but I really don't want to upgrade the whole rig right now if I can possibly avoid it. From what you're saying, though, it seems that if I stick with AMD, I'd want a quad-core chip so it could handle as many simultaneous threads as possible? So would that point to something like an Athlon II X2 640? Or would a dual-core without HT still manage ok if it was running at 3GHz or around that?
 
The HT update was only just recent and you'll be okay with 2 ghz dual core, it just helped. Extra threads would only help if you're running a modded server.

Its running a x64 bit OS right? If so you've most of the bases covered (32bit windows can only give 1.5gb to java and even then some configs limit to 1gb.)
 
Ah great. Cheers. Will go for a dual core then, for lower power consumption. Or would the now very old first-gen Athlon 64 7750+ I've got in there now actually suffice (2.7GHz, but an older and less efficient chip than the Athlon IIs I believe)? Perhaps even if I undervolted it and underclocked by a couple of hundred MHz?

It's currently running 64-bit Vista, but when I re-purpose it into a server I was thinking of putting a Linux install of some variety on it (Debian seems to be well recommended for server purposes, I think).
 
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an atom 1.8 will easly run an Feed the beast server ,,, 2 gig ram will easy run 15 players ,, i have it ruining on a kimsufi ks-1
 
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