How Much RAM and CPU Does a Game Server Need?

"How much RAM do I need?" is the first question every game server owner asks, and the honest answer is: it depends on the game, the player count and the mods. This guide gives realistic numbers and, more importantly, teaches you how to reason about specs so you don't overpay or under-provision.

The two things that actually matter

Most game servers care about two resources above all:

1. RAM — how much world and how many entities the server holds in memory.
2. Single-core CPU speed — most game servers run their main simulation on one thread, so a fast individual core beats lots of slow ones.

That second point surprises people. A 16-core budget CPU can perform *worse* for many games than a 4-core CPU with high clock speed, because the game loop can only use one core at a time.

RAM by game (realistic starting points)

These assume a modest player group; scale up for more players or heavy mods:

• Minecraft (vanilla/Paper): 2 GB for a few friends, 4 GB with plugins, 6 GB+ for a busy modded pack.
• Terraria / Factorio: 1–2 GB — very light.
• Valheim: 2–4 GB for a small group; 6–8 GB for a big base.
• Project Zomboid: 4–8 GB depending on players and map spread.
• CS2: 2–4 GB for a match server.
• 7 Days to Die: 6–12 GB.
• Rust: 6–16 GB, driven mainly by map size.
• V Rising / Satisfactory / Enshrouded: 6–16 GB depending on world and player count.
• Palworld: 8–16 GB, up to 32 GB for a full 32-player server.
• ARK: Survival Ascended: 16 GB minimum, 24–32 GB for a full tribe.

The RAM rule of thumb

Give the game process its target amount plus 1–2 GB for the operating system. Never allocate a Java heap (-Xmx) equal to your total RAM — the OS and off-heap memory need room, or the server will swap and stutter. On an 8 GB box, cap Minecraft's heap around 6 GB.

Why single-core speed matters

Minecraft, Valheim, Factorio, Rust and most survival games run their tick loop on one thread. When that thread can't finish its work in the tick budget (50 ms for a 20 TPS server), you get lag — regardless of how many other idle cores exist. This is why:

• A high-clock modern CPU outperforms an old many-core server chip for gaming.
• Adding cores helps only for a second server instance, background tasks, or the handful of games with real multithreading.

Player count scaling

More players means more entities, more chunks loaded and more network work. As a rough guide, budget roughly linearly with players once you're past the base overhead — doubling players often means roughly doubling RAM and meaningfully more CPU. Peak moments (a wipe, a raid, everyone logging in at once) are your true sizing target, not the quiet average.

Disk matters more than people think

World saves and chunk loading are disk-heavy. On slow or oversold storage, saves cause stutter for everyone online. NVMe SSD storage all but eliminates this — it's one of the biggest quiet upgrades you can make to a game server's feel.

How to size in practice

1. Start with the RAM figure for your game above.
2. Add 2 GB for the OS.
3. Prioritise a host with fast single-core CPU and NVMe storage over raw core count.
4. Leave headroom for your peak, not your average.
5. Scale up if profiling (/tps, /spark) shows you're hitting a limit.

Matching specs to a host

Because game servers lean on single-core speed and fast disk, the spec sheet to look for is high-clock CPU plus NVMe — exactly what Nxeon's VPS plans lead with. You can start on a right-sized plan and resize up if your player count grows, so you pay for the peak you actually have rather than guessing high on day one.