need help building dedicated nwn server.

[Delisha Zrazorian]

I always wanted to build a server to host one of my mods, but our Internet connection was crap,
so twas useless to try… Now with Mord getting Business class fiber optic, I’m gonna give it a go…
This will give us some hands on experience running a NWN server…


Below is my friend SharonaCurves opinion about server specs..

..To host a dedicated server.

When it comes to actual server hardware, do not waste your money on buying the latest and
greatest hardware. NEVER purchase a dual (or more) core processor if building a dedicated box.
Neverwinter Nights can only recognize a single core and so purchasing anything more is a waste.

You will also not need anymore than a 2.0ghz processor speed. Neverwinter Nights Dedicated
servers will never approach that fast of operations even with 64 players online and a 16,000
resource module running.

Another no brainer is the graphics card expense. You should optimally use the cheapest graphics
card you can find or just one you may have lying around. Onboard graphics are also fine. The
reason is that the server software uses 2d graphics, text readouts only. Do not waste any money
on buying a graphics card to support gaming because running a dedicated server is not going to
use any of those fancy-dancy instruction codes on the graphics processor.

In fact, you can use a graphics chipset(or card) that won’t even play the actual game to run your
server. For Main System memory you will want to splurge on this. The faster the memory, the faster
your server, the more memory you have, the faster your server. The only note here is that for
memory usage, the Neverwinter Nights Dedicated Server tops out at 2GB. Adding more RAM is
wasting resources.

As for a hard drive, you will need at a minimum a 20GB Hard drive. I do not recommend less than
this. You can certainly run a server with less storage space, but you will want a hard drive that
has enough space to support your operating system, a web browser(if you plan to sometimes
use one), any software you might want to have , your NWN installation, any haks you use, any
external NWN software, and of course your players Server Vault folders. My recommendation
for a Hard Drive is speed over capacity. If you have SATAII connection, get a SATAII 7200RPM Drive.
You’d be surprised how much of difference in speed the area load times are as well as other data
transfers when using a 7200RPM vs. a 5400RPM Hard Drive. Don’t worry too much about cache sizes,
since the Neverwinter software doesn’t handle that portion well anyways.

I know some of you hear some Server Administrators or Hosts claiming these incredible top of the
line machines to run their Neverwinter Nights Dedicated Servers. For the most part, all they claim
is wasted resources. You can run a Dedicated Neverwinter Nights Server just as smoothly on an
1Ghz Processor, 2GB RAM, 40GB Hard Drive, 8MB OnBoard Video as it will on a 3Ghz Quad-Core
Processor, 16GB RAM, 2TB Hard Drive, 2GB Video Card. I have found the optimal system resources
being 1.5 – 2Ghz Processor, 2GB RAM, 120GB Hard Drive, 64MB Video Card.

Well? Do you all agree with the above?
------------

Here are the new parts I have on hand… all from New Egg…

COOLER MASTER Elite 430 RC-430-KWN1 Black Steel / Plastic Computer Case with optional cooling fan…

CORSAIR Builder Series CX500 V2 500W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply

Sony Optiarc 24X DVD Burner, Black SATA Model AD-7280S-0B - OEM

So I will need the motherboard, CPU, ram and a hard drive…

If someone would be so kind as to go to New Egg and pick out the parts I need…
I’ll get them ordered so the building process can begin…

Also it sounds like Linux would be the preferred OS… where do I find it and what version?

Any advice here would be sweet…

Thanks…

[Amoenotep]

some of that is true, some of that i think is iffy. we've had several different hosts with completely differing hardware, and there was a difference.

when DD had the server there were limits to what we could push on it, because it was just a run of the mill pc using windows OS.

when we switched to cely's VM project servers....wow...holy cracker snatches. the game ran some kind of crazy on those machines it took me 15 mins of stressing it to crash it....and it never lagged until it died. also comparatively players noticed there was never lag and everything was fast.

on Sultan's box we put some hardware together that did really well. not top of the line, but not easy peasy either. core i5 and such..we even opted for the SSD this time around<that made a huge difference (till it burned up )

dont need a fancy optical drive, as you wont be doing any disk reading if its dedicated server.

linux handles NWN really well, free distros available. we use ubuntu command line because its easiest. command line over gui is what they tell me for security reasons, i think its because they don't like me.

[Korr]

There is a linux section in the NS forums here where you can probably get all the info you need for that.

2 quick things about what your friend suggested :

-It will basically be just as cheap to buy a dual-core. You can still set the affinity of NWN to a second core for dedicated processing (not that its heavily required... would just mean its more consistent).

-Even if NWN doesnt gain from a "faster processor" or multiple cores... newer processors have faster instruction sets (which doesnt necessarily lend into the speed of the processor) which means that a newer processor would still be a good option.

Check out pcpartpicker.com its a good site that will keep all your information and find it cheapest for you (or just give you the newegg link if you want).

How much are you thinking about spending and I can throw a few options together on that site.

[Delisha Zrazorian]

Thanks for the informative responses guys!...

looking at pcpartpicker.com... it seems we should be able to put something decent together for $300-$500 bucks unless I'm missing something...

I'll do some reading up on Linux... seems the way to go for sure

thanks again

[Lokey]

It depends most on what kind of module you're running. Whether NS push everything to the limit or something much smaller with fewer people (and fixes for the worst of the default scripting). If the latter, pretty much anything you pull out of a dumpster should do it

Not sure how much newer parts help perf-wise, ~$300US should be doable pretty easily. Multi-core provides some benefits for us, but we run some other stuff on the server besides nwn. Granted can you even find single core these days?

Either win or lin will be fine (nwnx-windows has gotten lots of love in the last year). Newer win releases, you'll need to dig up drivers for tons of things depending on tons of variables.