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Fitting a server with desktop hardware in a 1U rack mount chassis (fedia.io)
submitted 22 hours ago by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I have a server with desktop hardware (microATX motherboard and Core Ultra 7 265K CPU) which I use to run a Minecraft server. Its current physical location isn't ideal, so I'd like to put it in a rack mount chassis and move it to a server room I have access to through my university. However rack space in the room is limited, so it would be best if I can fit it into a 1U space.

From what I've heard the biggest issue with 1U is cooling, especially as the 265K can draw up to 250W. It seems like 1U microATX chassis do exist, like this one, but they don't look like they have good airflow, and I'm not sure where I would get a short enough heatsink. Could I realistically make 1U work, and if so what should I look for in terms of hardware? Or am I going to have to go with 2U?

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[+] -6 points 18 hours ago* (2 children)

So you're saying that the current Minecraft servers are all running on desktop hardware and not on standard U-chassis servers in racks in data centers?

If anything I'd expect them to run virtualized on standard rack servers.

Something here doesn't add up. I don't buy that enterprise server hardware that can out-perform desktop hardware by orders of magnitude can't do what you need - especially since that's surely how the existing servers run.

If this single-threading performance is really an issue, run some kind of virtualization on a rack server, build a VM with the exact hardware config you need, and the host hardware will make it happen (which I'd bet is exactly how current servers are run, because then they can be moved/Load balanced dynamically without missing a beat).

I currently have both single-core, single-cpu VM's and multi-core, multi-cpu VM's running on the same host for test purposes. The VM has no idea it's virtual hardware is actually run on a different multi-cpu/core host.

Check out xcp-ng - it's arguably the best open source virtualization platform today. VMware server can definitely do this, if you have a license.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 hours ago

    Consumer Hardware has feature enterprise/datacenter Hardware does not have and the otherway around.

    High End Consumer CPUs for example clock way higher and therefore have better single core performance, which can be a benefit.

    Non ECC memory and overclocked memory like on Consumer Hardware is often faster, especially when you compare price to performance.

    Especially when things like a minecraft server is not optimized for a 128-core CPU or even 32-core CPU.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 10 hours ago

    Yes, hosting providers do run servers on desktop hardware. See for example Bisect's dedicated server options which all have desktop Ryzen processors.

    Smaller Minecraft servers can run just fine on standard server hardware, and I'm sure that's what most hosting providers use for their lower tier server plans, since you can cram dozens of Minecraft servers onto one machine. But the main limitation for larger servers is single-threaded performance, which desktop CPUs are just far better at.

    Very large servers generally use server software like Folia which multithreads the game (like 2b2t) or split the server into many smaller servers (like Hypixel), which eliminates the single threaded performance issue but has some serious drawbacks.

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