Anyways, I digress. After running the "Low Budget" Minecraft server for a short while, we identified some problem areas, and a number of players made some very, very generous donations to make it a seriously top notch setup! Imagine my surprise when Amazon packages started arriving with stuff like an SSD, more RAM, and a Corsair closed loop CPU cooler!
The big issue in many Minecraft servers isn't the speed of the CPU or the ram allocation, it's actually the hard disk's ability to read and write "chunks". Chunks are the basic terrain unit of Minecraft, and to keep resource demands in check a player will only ever have a certain radius of chunks loaded around them. The more chunks you have being modified or generated, the higher the demand on the hard disk because those portions of your world are getting read from (and any changes saved to) the server's map file. An quick demonstration of this is to start a new world and have a few players go into creative mode and start flying in opposite directions. The server will grind almost to a halt- the RAM isn't used up, the CPU isn't breaking a sweat, but the hard disk is getting hit with so many read/write requests that it just plain can't keep up!
Imagine my delight, then, when a brand new 60GB Kingston SSDNow drive arrived! On top of that, a matching stick of 4GB Kingston RAM, a Corsair H55 CPU cooler, and a set of Corsair AF120 quiet case fans meant that the server was in for a seriously cool overhaul, all thanks to generous players!
Back to the upgrade bench it went, and the installation was rather uneventful considering how easy everything is to hook up. Here it is looking fancy on the workbench:
Once it was all buttoned up, I reinstalled the OS onto the SSD and got the server back up and running. Even with more fans running than before, it was far quieter. The bigger RAM allocation meant that I could allocate a full 4GB to the Minecraft process and have tons of overhead, and the CPU cooler meant that even running a 24/7 instance of Minecraft the CPU temps rarely climb north of 32° C. The biggest single difference, though, was the SSD. Whereas before a few players wandering could lead to a reasonable amount of chunk loading lag, now it took a concerted effort and a few nuclear TNT explosions to generate the same type of latency.
All in all, I'd say it was a great success!
The amended system stats are now as follows:
Cooler Master N200 Case
Asus M5A78L-M LX3 Motherboard
AMD FX4130 CPU
Corsair H55 CPU Cooler
8GB Kingston HyperX blu DDR3 1600 RAM
Corsair CX430M Power Supply
MSi Radeon HD6570
1x Kingston SSDNow 60GB Solid State Drive
1x Western Digital 320GB Hard Drive
