Brad387

I made that post on a separate thread that I created. As you can tell from it, I want to do a kind of corporate warfare with a few people. Like six of us split into two teams of three. We each set-up rival companies selling products like cookies or something. Anyone here interested? I only like small servers. Give us a PM if you are.

With the weather so bad at the moment and having also suffered a minor injury making it inadvisable to partake in any activities that are rather physical, I have recently begun to watch the Yogscast (a very large group of YouTube users who produce videos of themselves playing a variety of games) build companies in Tekkit. Since I thought it looked really fun, I attempted to host a server and play with my friends online - only to find that my laptop isn't capable of running a server whilst playing on it at the same time. Some friends of a friend have a server, but it isn't very populated and none of them actually want to work as a team. I want to work as teams with people and build up giant factories to produce products and perhaps even have rival companies. I also hate ridiculously large servers because their communities are usually awful. Anyone here beginning a server and up for that or know of a small server that does that? I would look for Tekkit Lite, since it is newer. But I love OptiFine!

Looking at my finances, the time it will take me to raise the necessary funds for even the most basic of gaming PCs is ridiculously long. Is there no other way I can get started? I did read somewhere that, with the right knowledge, it is possible to upgrade a laptop's CPU. My GPU is weak too, but games like Tekkit (which I really want to play) are limited by my poor CPU and not really my GPU because they aren't too graphical.

How do I delete my account for these forums?

Sorry, but I want to build my own and not by from some shady backstreet dealer.

I really doubt I could build a gaming PC for around $300 USD, which is £187 GBP and actually cheaper than both the ancient Xbox 360 and PS3 over here. Remember that VAT is applied at 20% here in the UK.

Building it myself might prove difficult, but I have family members who know some stuff and even hiring a PC shop to build it for me looks as though it would prove cheaper than buying a pre-built machine.

My maximum budget is around £600 GBP, so I am not really sure how much that will get me once VAT is factored in. However, there is no way I can afford any more at present. As I said, cheaper is better at the moment. I can, so long as I get a motherboard that supports it and leave room to increase the power with regards to the power supply, always upgrade - right?

I have revitalised this thread with the information you have all been asking. Please refer to the now updated OP and thanks for your advice so far. I will now be going through and responding to your comments.

I have been trying to host and play on a Tekkit server with some friends for awhile now. Will Tekkit Lite run better than Classic did and, if so, will it actually be that noticeable? What do we lose out by switching from Classic to Lite?

Wrong.

Just PC gaming a on a budget. No set budget..

I have grown a recent affinity for PC gaming, having realised that the initially higher price for the machine is well compensated by cheaper games with more content. New releases, such as Borderlands 2, are often £10-£15 GBP cheaper on Steam than on Xbox 360 and Steam has some truly fantastic sales on. From personal experience, I have also found the PC community to be generally much nicer and, unlike Xbox 360 where a game of Call of Duty results in me listening to a small child use bluer language than a sailor because I happened to kill them, I can just enjoy playing the game at my own ability/pace. Then there is great innovative titles, such as Minecraft, that take years to arrive on consoles (if ever) and lack the great mod support. My friends are, for the majority, all PC gamers also and it would be awesome to play with them! The consoles are also all getting extremely dated on the technological side and it looks as though the next generation, which has already begun with the likes of the Nintendo Wii U, won't offer a significant improvement. Since I already use my laptop for the majority of my media consumption, I like the idea of bringing gaming into the mix as well and thus eliminating the need for multiple devices that each take up space. I think now is the perfect time to begin raising some money and planning out a gaming PC. I want to be able to comfortable play all the latest titles on reasonable settings at a solid frame-rate. Other things I would love to be able to do is host/play at the same time on a Tekkit server with a few people and also run screen-recording software, which will finally allow me to consider starting the YouTube channel I have been planning, without games running to a crawl. Video-rendering speeds aren't too important, so long as they aren't abysmally slow (which they wouldn't be as any modern processor will far outperform my current one). Unfortunately, my laptop meets none of these requirements. Its specification is as follows: Acer Aspire 5552 AMD Athlon II P320 Dual-Core 2.1 Ghz 4 GB DDR3 RAM ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 256 MB VRAM 1366x768 LCD Display I don't have thousands, unfortunately to spend, and £600 GBP (including VAT and any shipping costs) is the maximum that I could possibly ever afford. The cheaper I can get this experience, the better! Since I would like to use this on my 42" Panasonic Plasma TV utilising Steam's Big Picture mode, I won't need to purchase a monitor. Though I will need a good wireless keyboard and mouse to adequately play games, so please do leave some suggestions for that. I will, naturally, need a copy of Windows 8 Professional 64-bit and it is important for that to be factored into the costs. However, I mainly need advice regarding what parts to buy and where to get them cheapest. Whilst I know quite a lot on the software side, such as how to use complex software like Photoshop or even do basic HTML coding for a website, my knowledge on which processors/graphics cards are better than each other isn't very good. Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated. Thanks! UPDATE: Looking at my finances, the time it will take me to raise the necessary funds for even the most basic of gaming PCs is ridiculously long. Is there no other way I can get started? I did read somewhere that, with the right knowledge, it is possible to upgrade a laptop's CPU. My GPU is weak too, but games like Tekkit (which I really want to play) are limited by my poor CPU and not really my GPU because they aren't too graphical.

I only have this computer available to me to actually both play and host. The other computers in the house are each other people's properties and not mine to use. So, if it is not possible to host and play at the same time, then it simply isn't going to happen.

Okay. I just checked on a resource monitor and my RAM isn't what is running out. It is my pathetic CPU reaching its absolute limit. Looks like there is simply no way I will be able to host...

So, do you believe it worthwhile upgrading or not my RAM? EDIT: I also just did a Speed Test on my newly fitted internet. Currently receiving a 25 MBPS download and around 15 MBPS upload. It should improve after a couple of days also, or so I was told.

My friends and I are finally setting up a multiplayer server for the three of us to play on and, since we are all on Christmas holiday soon with plenty of free-time, it won't take us long to get fully into the mod. However, I thought it might be a nice idea to build something with a Christmas feel to it. It is going to be legitimately done though, so don't suggest ridiculously large builds that would only be possible in creative. Any ideas?

Yes. Without a proper keyboard, it isn't going to the best. Personally, I'd say drop down to an i3, perhaps get some more RAM and then just get a cheaper laptop with proper keyboard. Desktop PCs deliver the best performance at the end of the day though...

Sorry. I have it the wrong way round. It is meant to be 59 download and around 30 upload for my internet, but still pretty good. As for RAM, it is DDR3 actually and 8 GB is the maximum I can install. Besides replacing my HDD with an SSD, which would prove very expensive, I cannot change processors or motherboards - because it is of course a laptop. I currently have, if I am reading the BAT file correctly, 2 GB of my 4 GB dedicated to the server. On that logic, I believe that upgrading to 8 GB would allow me to give around 3 or 4 GB to the server. Would that really not help at least reduce lag for just the three of us to play? EDIT: I have 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium with both 64-bit and 32-bit (for browsers) versions of Java installed.

I am currently running a small Tekkit server for three friends locally on my laptop using Hamachi, but its performance so far has been rather underwhelming. Prior to even creating any machines and with only two people online at once, there is still an unacceptable amount of lag due to the world generation with my FPS hitting as low as 20 on the lowest possible graphical settings (I can run Tekkit single-player fine on medium settings roughly with a solid 60 FPS). My friends have also complained of this and it is dissappointing because I had had plans of expanding the server to around 10 people and setting up a small community. However, I doubt this will be possible now because more people will result in both more machines and a larger world generating. Any tips as to how I can possible solve this? I have kept plugins to a minimum, with just the Essentials Core plugin to offer some basic commands (I wanted to change the spawn because it bugged out). I also run only the Tekkit client for me to play on, Hamachi to run the network and the server client itself also. I currently have a 2.1 Ghz AMD Athlon P320 processor and 4 GB of RAM. My internet should be getting an upgrade tomorrow to fibre-optic, with promised speeds of around 59 MBPS up and around 30 MBPS down. This will undoubtedly help, but I doubt it will still be enough. I heard of a plugin that helps with lag. What is it? Also, as the name of this very thread suggests, I would like to know if upgrading to 8 GB RAM will improve the performance of the server? Thanks for any advice people leave.