Minecraft modpack server specs

[WildW]

Does anyone here host a local minecraft server with any of the fancy modpacks like Technic or FTB?

My partner and kids play and we'd like to run a persistent server just on our LAN on a dedicated box in the near future. Google hasn't been very helpful in trying to find out what specs are needed, particularly for some of the heavier modpacks, so I'm interested to know what anyone else is running. I have a couple of old machines that could be pushed into service but I don't know if they'd be up to the task - a Pentium E5300 (3.2 GHz dual C2D) and an Athlon II X3 (3.3GHz) . . both will overclock a bit to about 3.6 I think, but they're still kind of weedy.

Am I right in thinking that the minecraft server is still essentially single threaded? If that's the case, what's the best bet for a cost-effective minecraft server CPU? One of those unlocked anniversary haswell pentiums instead of a quad that it wouldn't really use?

 

[nsafreak]

Minecraft and the mods for the most part are single threaded. What you need is RAM, lots and lots of RAM. FTB is especially memory hungry, how much depends on which pack you happen to get. Presuming you're running a Linux server and you're going with around 4 players I would go with a minimum of 4 gigs of RAM, with 8 gigs being recommended. The more players that you add the more RAM you'll need. You could try running it on your existing E5300 and see if it gets the performance that you need. If not I would probably go with a G3528 and 8 gigs of RAM. I typically don't see high CPU usage on my server and it's running on an i5 2500K but my FTB DireWolf20 server does use a pretty fair amount of RAM.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Just bukkit. Works fine in 2GB of ram for 2-3 users. (Ubuntu VM, G3250 box below)