Gin Posted January 31, 2016 Share Posted January 31, 2016 Hello Lovelies.. I am hoping to catch the eye of some of the wonderful IT Geeks on here because I need your advice I'm currently running my old Dell tower as a gaming server for a few friends, which is working oookkk... However it's not perfect just simply because it's so old. So I am looking into building a new gaming server rig! Yay! This is where I need your help.. I could charge headlong into this and start looking through motherboards and cpu etc but I nearly cocked up once or twice trying to build my current PC and I really don't want to mess this one up! I think OS wise I'm avoiding the Linux Ubuntu route for Windows server 2008, simply because I know it better and already have to faff with each server program itself, never mind trying to learn a new OS! Apart from that; Advise away! I am all ears Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MR_W Posted January 31, 2016 Share Posted January 31, 2016 Not server 2008! 2k8 r2 as a minimum. 2008 is known as vista server for good reason....What spec you running atm? I have an old hex core AMD here that I'm not using. 1090T I think. Board to go with it, you would need to get some ddr3 for it. Can do onboard raid which would suffice for a game server if you aren't worried about downtime.The other option is do you need the hardware yourself? Could go for a hosted system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joeman Posted January 31, 2016 Share Posted January 31, 2016 Loads of great cloud hosted solutions out there. Could work out cheaper in the long run. Just spin it up when needed and shut it down when not and only pay for actual CPU time.No need for space to keep it or for the power/bandwidth it consumes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorian Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 My boss has mentioned several times about having some of our servers cloud based.. Other than that i've never built one so i can't help to much If you need help with a gaming PC though i can help you there Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrBrightside Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Glorian I have a quick question pal, I have an Xbox one and pretty happy with it. What's the difference graphic quality wise between one of them and a top spec gaming PC? Much or not?Ta...Mart Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorian Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Hmm, Can't really say to much on this, Never used an xbone. But a good gaming PC the graphics are superb provided you have to power to run them on full. Depends also what games you'd be playing. You thinking of getting a PC? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joeman Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 My boss has mentioned several times about having some of our servers cloud based.. Other than that i've never built one so i can't help to much If you need help with a gaming PC though i can help you there Take a look at Amazon's cloud offerings. Loads of cool stuff that would help most businesses to save money on infrastructure.Register a personal account and start playing, its not expensive, you only pay for the resources you use, so if you only fire up the tiny servers and leave them running whilst you play it won't cost you much at all, but you'll get some valuable cloud experience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoggs Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Just be careful you don't accidentally start Skynet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gin Posted February 1, 2016 Author Share Posted February 1, 2016 Hullo guys Thanks for the help so far.. Basically we've tried renting space or specific servers before and just always had an arse of a time with it where as running our own is far more responsive.From what I've read having a typical 'server' set up rig is not suited for a gaming server.. Most motherboards that are recommended are gaming MOs not server based.. What I've gathered so far is that it needs to be similar to a gaming PC but sans the graphics card etc. More emphasis on fast, quiet hard drives / quick CPU / Lots of RAM etc.. MBS from being in a house with Xbox 1 and PC I have to say the graphic upgrade to a PC is not as bigger jump as you might think however PC just has far more flexibility in the way you play in my opinion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrBrightside Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Hmm, Can't really say to much on this, Never used an xbone. But a good gaming PC the graphics are superb provided you have to power to run them on full. Depends also what games you'd be playing. You thinking of getting a PC? Been thinking about one for a while mate. Just don't want too much gear in me front room.Sorry to hijack your thread Gin....ill stop there Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joeman Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Rumours perpetuated by Gaming hardware manufacturers Not all rented servers are equal. Depending on who you rented from before, you may have had minimal resources or high number of virtual servers on the same hardware.Cloud based servers are used for pretty much everything these days, from simple web hosting, to low latency electronic trading.and gaming companies use them as the backend for mobile apps as it allows them to scale up and down based on demand.For the sake of a few quids worth of cloud time and a couple of hours setup and testing, I'd say it was worth a try.You're biggest issue is likly going to be ping time and hop counts, but that's not going to be any worse than a server in you bedroom on home broadband where providers are know to throttle gaming traffic...Amazons EC2 even lists "Gaming" in the use cases.. https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorian Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Hmm, Can't really say to much on this, Never used an xbone. But a good gaming PC the graphics are superb provided you have to power to run them on full. Depends also what games you'd be playing. You thinking of getting a PC? Been thinking about one for a while mate. Just don't want too much gear in me front room.Sorry to hijack your thread Gin....ill stop there PM if you want some more help building one. They do take up a bit of space though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arwen Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Server spec aside, what games will you be hosting and for how many people? And what is your broadband line like? (Not just speed but latency too) You may find you are limited to what your line can support, rather than hardware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gin Posted February 1, 2016 Author Share Posted February 1, 2016 Nothing too strenuous to be honest, they're not going to be open to the public so it's only ever going to be for max 20 people. Minecraft, Project Zomboid, Garys mods / CS-Source, Space Engineers etc.. I'll do a speedtest and post the results when I get home tonight but our nets pretty on point. I am running just a Minecraft server at the moment off my little 'server' PC and those connecting have no issue with connection stability or lag. I have had it running Minecraft, PZ and Space engineers before with people connecting to each and it's more it's RAM that becomes the problem than anything else Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RantMachine Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Nothing too strenuous to be honest, they're not going to be open to the public so it's only ever going to be for max 20 people. Minecraft, Project Zomboid, Garys mods / CS-Source, Space Engineers etc.. Clearly you do not play Space Engineers like my old school friend plays space engineers... SO MANY automated mining ships carving up so many asteroids at once... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
klingelton Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 I'd suggest taking a look at AWS or other cloud based solutions. I span up a space engineers server in an hour. you don't have to worry about software licensing. you choose the OS you want. connectivity can be via open connection to the web, or you can grant ips. it's very simple to set up. The downside is that it's not cheap for an "always on" solution. but it would be cheaper than buying your own hardware.I have a spare 3.2 ghz dual xeon 32gb rack server sat in my garage doing nowt! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gin Posted February 1, 2016 Author Share Posted February 1, 2016 Haha well we haven't played since they put planets in to be honest but we have run them in the past Though I would love to see your mates game in action! Sounds Awesome! Hey K, one of my problems is that it does need to be always on as people log in at different times and all the hassle that comes with that... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RantMachine Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Awesome it is not, he plays far more frequently than me and so I frequently tend to log in to find the solar system stripped bare, forcing me to spend ages relocating to somewhere that still has asteroids to mine. I had to adapt my play style so that I have the most compact large ship I could possibly make while still featuring a full complement of manufacturing facilities, so that it can produce fresh oxygen and fuel without having the stop and build a base each time. Pain in the bum!Planets are good and all, but I don't find them as good for resource farming; takes a lot longer to locate any good stuff, and even longer to collect it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
klingelton Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 you can do always on with AWS, but for a server with enough grunt to run space engineers, you're looking at around £30 - £40 a month +. if you know how much grunt you're going to need, you can pre-allocate (helps them to plan) so it becomes a little cheaper. i suppose if you're looking at buying server hardware £360 a year is a relative drop in the ocean.the additional benefit of AWS is the backups - you can backup to an s3 bucket and take hourly (or whatever period you like) snapshots which is replicated automatically to 3 places in the world. you only pay for storage for this service and you get a tonne free (meant for devs). You won't get this if you build your own hardware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soll Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Nothing too strenuous to be honest, they're not going to be open to the public so it's only ever going to be for max 20 people. Minecraft, Project Zomboid, Garys mods / CS-Source, Space Engineers etc.. Clearly you do not play Space Engineers like my old school friend plays space engineers... SO MANY automated mining ships carving up so many asteroids at once... sounds like a reason to log into your server build some fighters and go blow the nuts out of those ships played space engineers for a while but just got bored with it...now rainbow six siege would be good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RantMachine Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Personally I prefer sneak attacks on his mothership paired with attaching a buttload of artificial mass to a corner of his ship and a couple of gravity generators pointing straight forwards at full power. Ship spins WILDLY out of control and spirals off into the distance, as soon as he leaves the cockpit it fires him against the wall and he can't do a damn thing about it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorian Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 I play siege on PS4.Good game, a little run and gun on ranked unfortunately. I tend just to play with friends or do terrorist hunt, but still good fun Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arwen Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 So if your line is up to the task, what is your budget. A site I use for rough comparing and compatibility testing is uk.pcpartpicker.comTo be honest. You are probably going to be fine using high end gaming motherboards and a reasonably new i7 processor. Xeons come into their own with big data transfers, but the i7's are proving to be very capable. Pair a nice i7 with a Z97 spec motherboard, a decent amount of good RAM (highish speed - lowish CL) and some good HDD(SSD idealy) and you will be good to go I reckon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MR_W Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 i5 is a better choice than an i7 for games as the hyperthreading on an i7 still isn't used properly by games. 6th gen i5, 8gb DDR 4 and a gtx 970 will run pretty much anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorian Posted February 2, 2016 Share Posted February 2, 2016 i5 is a better choice than an i7 for games as the hyperthreading on an i7 still isn't used properly by games. 6th gen i5, 8gb DDR 4 and a gtx 970 will run pretty much anything. Can confirm. My i5 runs perfectly well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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