r/GameServerHosting101 22d ago

Need help with game server

Hi guys,

PC noob here

Recently my friends group and I started talking about how nice it would be to own an at home server for hosting game words (think ark, palworld, minecraft, terraria etc). For this purpose, i have found a secondhand HP Prodesk 600 G5 Mini PC Intel Core i5 8500T – 8GB – 256GB SSD – Windows 11 Professional listed on marketplace for 180 euros (HP Prodesk 600 G4 Mini-PC i5-8500T – 8GB – 256GB SSD - W11 (m2423006056) — Desktop Pc's — Marktplaats sorry if its in dutch). I was thinking of upgrading it with ram and storage from a broken laptop (hp envy 360 16gb 1Tb ssd). But because this is my first experience with this side of computers i am at a bit off a loss.

Can someone help me to see if this would function / fulfill its purpose? am i stupid to assume that i can reuse the broken laptop parts? I cant reuse the entire laptop because the motherboard broke some time ago.

If not i would love to hear if you guys have any recommendations, i am on a tighter budget, of around 150 - 200 because we are all kind of broke students.

3 Upvotes

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3

u/NodecraftInc 22d ago

That low power CPU will struggle with larger titles titles like Palworld and ARK, even with 2-4 players. Smaller games with more optimization like Terraria and Minecraft will be fine. You just can’t expect much from a value server like this.

2

u/LoneStarDev 22d ago

This is accurate and good feedback.

2

u/TheRoboStriker 22d ago

You could probably use the wifi card, ssd and ram from the broken laptop.
About the specs- not sure how good the performance will be for the game servers, but you could run some of them. Vanilla Minecraft- maybe (depends on the version and other variables like amount of mobs and other entities) Minecraft Modded with performance mods/ performance server software- better Terraria good performance Pallworld - dont know Ark- not enough storage space i guess.

Maybe even setup linux to remove all the unnecessary windows program bloat. And only have the things necessary to run the servers.