Interesting! Thank you. I read the first page stating that there is a difference between rates Ghz of processors, but are you really telling me this 3.6Ghz would be faster than a 4.2Ghz? That's a hard one to swallow.
I never get anything prebuilt so no worries for that. I am a little confused about the information that that website is lacking. The Motherboard I have picked out is of similar pricing, is a full ATX instead of microATX. But also has a built in graphics card. This one states it depends on the CPU? Because I read (and experienced) that even for a commandline server the motherboard must have a video card in order to even boot up. The SSD on the website is certainly pricey and all I find about it's speed is "Interface 6Gb/s". That's very obscure, i wouldn't be able to believe that existed because local shops that sell SDDs that feature 2GB read and write speeds are well over $2000 here. Looking up the product (the SDD you recommend) in one of my local shops it states the read and write are 530/390. I was considering grabbing a Mushkin Chronos 60GB with a rate of 550/515 read write. Which would only set me back 45 euros (~$60) I figured that would be able to keep up with world gen at least. If the game generates more than 550MB of world gen, or even just half that assuming the OS and such need a little of that bandwidth as well, every second that would be pretty insane on the game's part. As for the RAM I would have picked 4 banks of 2GB over a single 8GB one because I think 4 connections would mean faster parallel work right? I suppose the price on that is a little higher at 80 euros instead of the ~40 for a single bank. Could you give some more feedback on why you would pick a single bank over filling out your motherboard slots?
Not really hardware related but if anyone would be willing to share or point me to where I can find what is the recommended upload per player for the DW20 pack?
Also I think if I switch to the onboard graphics card on the motherboard and can bench my GTS250 that should free up enough wattage on the power supply that I don't even have to consider about replacing/upgrading it.
EDIT: I wanted to throw in what i've got into my own PCPicker list for you. But it seems most of the parts I have available are not on that website.
Heres some detailed specs if you wish to look it up.
Motherboard: MSI-760GA-P43 (FX)
RAM: G.Skill 8 GB DDR3-1600 Quad-Kit (clocked at CLS9-9-9-24)
CPU: "Vishera" AMD-FX-4350
SSD: Mushkin Chronos MKNSSDCR60GB
Which would set me back a total of 270 euros (~$375)
Yes, even though the clockspeed is lower on the Intel chips, they are faster in single threaded tasks because of the underlying architecture. AMD doesn't really compete in terms of performance unless the task is heavily multi-threaded.
MicroATX vs Full ATX makes little difference in this situation and I only picked the smaller board because of its price. ATX just has room for more ports which you don't really need for a small server like this.
Integrated graphics used to be part of motherboards but in recent years are now built entirely into the CPU. Rest assured, it will work just fine as a server this way. Wouldn't make much sense for Intel and AMD to sell the chips if it didn't.
Sata 3 has a maximum speed of 6gbps or 6000mbps. A good SSD maxes out at about 4gbps or 4000mbps. That speed is measured using large file transfers. What really makes the difference in a solid state drive is small transfer speed and parallel transfers.
The SSD you listed is good, but the 840 Pro is a bit better. You decide if the extra space and speed are worth it to you. The SSD's your local shops are probably offering are PCI-E SSD's, they can be quite fast but are also very expensive. ($2000 you mentioned)
Go with either 1 8GB stick or 2 4GB sticks. Single vs Dual channel memory won't make a very noticeable difference and your thinking of quad channel which is still several years away from being common.
Using a single slot also makes memory upgrades easier, because now you have extra slots. Each slot can takes a single 8GB stick of memory.
That's the answers to all your hardware questions. As for the upload speed, I typically plan for about 1mbps upload per player but that can overkill. There is also a point of diminishing returns, so if you need exact number of slots, you will have to do some testing. As for the power supply, anything over 300 watts should run the build I planned. The 430 watt power supply I suggested was merely the cheapest power supply I felt comfortable suggesting. Also, if your buying these parts in Europe or Canada, it might be a bit more expensive because of taxes and shipping.
If you have any more questions, just let me know.
Edit: I forgot to mention, the performance between the processor you mentioned and my suggestion would be at least 20% in favor of my mine.[DOUBLEPOST=1397257278][/DOUBLEPOST]
SNIP
(In terms of fairness. The AMD core i wanted to get also actually rates higher than the Intel that DZCreeper suggested.
Proof)
EDIT: But i do see these scores are not the actual "Single Thread Rating". Darn... Time to look at more statistics then.
Don't go with socket 1155, its already outdated by socket 1150 which is Intel Haswell chips. As for the performance difference, the AMD chips slightly beat the Intel chips when both are 100% utilized but Minecraft will only utilize one core at a time and that is where Intel shines.
