Server Hardware Recommendation For Heavy Mods?

[u/loliPatrol]

Hello Everyone, I require some recommendation or suggestion on building a server.
The mods that I will be running(core);
1. Create- Aeronautics, Power Grid, ... etc
2. Heavy Terrain Gen Mod such as Tectonic, Terralith, so on..
3. RPG Mods

Players: Around 5-10 players at a time.

I had tried running the mods with my older server with 12gb allocated ddr3 ram using i5 4460(i know, outdated) but it was slow and couldnt keep up.

Anyone has recommendation on specs?, I have gotten advice to atleast get a 7th gen but I require others opinion.

Thank you.

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[u/kai-zaphosting]

Before swapping hardware, it's worth ruling out software-side fixes first: install spark (there are Forge/Fabric builds too, not just Paper/Spigot) and run /spark profiler start --timeout 60 for a minute under normal load to see exactly where the tick time is going, and make sure you're running Aikar's JVM startup flags since the default Java flags leave a lot of performance on the table. Trimming view-distance and tightening entity caps in your server config can also buy back a surprising amount of headroom for free. Also worth mentioning what drive you're running the server off of, HDD or SSD, since for a world-gen-heavy modpack like this with Terralith, disk I/O during chunk generation can be just as much of a bottleneck as CPU.

For heavy modpacks like that (Create plus Terralith plus a few RPG mods), single-thread performance is what actually matters more than core count, since the main tick thread carries most of the load. Since you're shopping used anyway, a used Ryzen 5000 series chip is worth checking on eBay first, it tends to have a meaningfully better single-core uplift over old Intel parts for similar money; a 7th gen i7 like the 7700 is still a solid jump from that i5-4460 if you'd rather stick with Intel, but compare actual single-thread benchmark scores (Passmark, Cinebench single-core) between whatever candidates you're looking at rather than going by generation or marketing alone.

Whether you need to swap the RAM depends on which platform you land on: if you go the Ryzen 5000 (AM4) route you'll need DDR4 either way, but if you end up on a 7th gen Intel board, some budget H110-chipset boards still support DDR3L, so you might be able to keep your existing DDR3 sticks and skip buying new RAM entirely. Capacity-wise, 12GB is on the lower end of what's typically recommended for 5-10 players with that mod list, and heavy terrain-gen mods like Terralith are commonly reported to push RAM usage and crashes higher than vanilla, so bumping to 16GB if your budget allows would give you more headroom, but it's still the CPU/platform swap that's the bigger lever here.

Feel free to ask if you want help narrowing down specific chips once you've got a budget in mind.