I'm looking to build a small Minecraft server and a possible file server to be ran at home 24/7. PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks CPU: Intel Core i3-2120 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor (£89.94 @ Scan.co.uk) Motherboard: ASRock H61M-S Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£37.99 @ Amazon UK) Memory: Corsair XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£22.00 @ CCL Computers) Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£78.06 @ CCL Computers) Storage: Crucial V4 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk Power Supply: Corsair 430W ATX12V Power Supply (£35.32 @ Scan.co.uk) Optical Drive: Sony AD-7280S-0B DVD/CD Writer (£13.03 @ CCL Computers) Total: £276.34 (Prices include shipping and discounts when available.) (Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-08-14 10:04 BST+0100) As you can see I havn't added a case yet as I'm not sure what's a good MicroATX case for this purpose. Budget: As little as possible - £250-300 Main Uses: Minecraft Server for friends (Possible do some UHC and have 15 at once say) Current Spec: Not needed Monitor: I'll use a 1920x1080 to set it up then hopefully it'll run by its self (Can I use something like LogMeIn to control it?) Overclocking: Nope Storage: 2TB + SSD + Any future drives Special Reqs.: Low power usage would be ideal.
You definitely need more RAM in that machine - I would be looking at 16GB for a Minecraft server with 15 people. You may not need the SSD at all - all it would store is the operating system, and it would only get booted up once in several weeks (assuming the server is running 24/7). You might also want a bit more grunt with a better CPU, but it should be fine for a small Minecraft server and file server. To drive the cost down a bit more, you could completely remove the optical drive - it will rarely be used in a server. As for the case, you can probably just get by with a cheap Micro ATX case - it won't be touched very often, so good build quality is not critical. Also, could we get a mod to move this to the hardware section?
Yeah, as soon as I posted it I did think I'd need more RAM. I'll remove the CD-Drive and add more RAM. Also, sorry about the wrong section wasn't paying enough attention >.>
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks CPU: Intel Core i3-2120 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor (£89.94 @ Scan.co.uk) Motherboard: ASRock H61M-S Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£37.99 @ Amazon UK) Memory: Corsair XMS3 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 Memory (£43.04 @ CCL Computers) Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£78.06 @ CCL Computers) Storage: Crucial V4 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk Power Supply: Corsair 430W ATX12V Power Supply (£35.32 @ Scan.co.uk) Optical Drive: Sony AD-7280S-0B DVD/CD Writer (£13.03 @ CCL Computers) Total: £297.38 (Prices include shipping and discounts when available.) (Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-08-14 11:05 BST+0100)
The problem with that list is that the total price does not include the cost of the SSD (due to it having no apparent price on PCPartPicker). So if you are hell-bent on the SSD, add another £70 to your total.
I dis-agree with the 16GB RAM suggestion. 15 player mine craft typically is run on 512mb of ram from most providers. 8GB will be more than enough for what Minecraft will need and for any other task you set. I personally would get a Quad core in there.
Just to put this into some perspective I have a micro server running: Home server - 2GB ram 2 2008 vms - 512mb 1 2008 R2 vms -512mb 1 minecraft server - 2 GB Vista vm - 1gb And minecraft (tekkit) runs smoothly without any issues at all according to my brother who plays on it (Max 5 players though)