Build, Setup & Giveaway of £700 GAME SERVER!

First off, I want to make it clear that this video, and this giveaway, is sponsored by the amazing AMP game server control panel – and that’s exactly what we’re going to be installing and setting up once we get this system built, and yeah at the end of this very video we are going to be giving away this thing, so stay tuned. First though, what is it we are actually doing here? In short, building a game server. This happens to be a £700 game server capable of hosting multiple sessions and games at once – be that for your friends, a Discord server, or even as a game hosting side hustle – AMP and this hardware can handle it! 

Speaking of the hardware, let’s take a look and see what we’re working with here. The PC Part Picker link will be in the description if you want to follow along by the way! Starting with the heart of the build, the CPU, that is a Ryzen 7700X, an 8 core, 16 thread chip that should offer plenty of performance to run any game server you want, and the fact it has an iGPU built in works great for this build too since servers like this don’t need any GPU horsepower. That’s being dropped into a Gigabyte B650 EAGLE AX motherboard, which is one of the cheapest AM5 boards available. It still has all the modcons we’ll need, like M.2 slots, four DDR5 DIMM slots, and plenty of PCIe expansion if you want to add stuff like storage and networking later down the line. As for cooling, I’ve opted for an ARCTIC Freezer 36, an exceptional value single tower cooler. RAM wise we’ve splashed out for 64GB of DDR5-5600 CL46 RAM, which is excellent for hosting, plus it’s only two sticks, so if you did want to double it later you absolutely can. Using four sticks does mean you have more memory bandwidth available, which could give you a bit more performance, although personally I prefer easier upgradability. Storage is a Silicon Power UD90 2TB M.2 Gen 4×4 drive – again to cut costs you could opt for a 1TB drive instead, but at £91 this is a pretty great deal and means you have more than enough storage to start off with. You can always add drives later if you need more! That is all being powered by a be quiet! Pure Power 12 550W power supply. I picked this one in particular because it’s 80+ Gold rated, meaning it’s going to be basically as efficient as possible, which is important for a machine running 24/7. And finally that’s all getting housed in a Phanteks XT PRO mid tower case – I have a soft spot for Phanteks cases, and I expect this one to be nice to build in, and good quality too – and for just £55 that’s pretty great too. So, those are the parts, let’s get to building!

To start off the build we want to build up the motherboard with everything that mounts directly to it, starting with the CPU. That’s pretty simple, if very delicate. You lift the arm on the socket, lift the retention cover, then gently place the chip in the socket, aligning the gold triangle with the triangle on the socket. Pop the cover back, and clip the arm in. That’s it, CPU in! RAM is next, this is super easy, just unclip the tabs at the top and bottom, specifically these two slots, farthest and second closest, and match the notch to the notch in the slot, then just press them in making sure you hear the satisfying click from both sides. The SSD goes in the top slot with the heatsink, so for the first time so far you’ll need a screwdriver to take the heatsink off, and annoyingly while the two open M.2 slots under the PCIe slot are toolless, this heatsinked slot isn’t, so you’ll need to find a tiny screw from the box, then slide the drive into the socket, push it down and put the screw in, then you can take the protective sticker off the heatsink thermal pad and put it back down, using the captive screw to tie it down. Lastly for the board itself, the CPU cooler. This one needs a screwdriver too, as you’ll need to remove the stock cooler mounting arms  and instead attach the AM5 mounting arms from the cooler with the plastic spacers. Then you can apply a bead of thermal paste onto the CPU, AND REMOVE THE PROTECTIVE FILM FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE COOLER! I can’t stress this enough, PLEASE REMOVE THIS. Don’t become another meme on reddit. Then place it down, screwing in the two screws on the sides. We’re going to install the fans once it’s in the case, as otherwise you’d struggle to get the motherboard screws in.

Now onto the case, you’ll want to remove both side panels, and then I like to install the power supply. This one doesn’t have any modular cables, so we don’t need to do much to it besides slide it in, fan side down, and install the four screws in the back. I also like to pre-run some of the more awkward and annoying cables, especially the 8 pin CPU power connector in the top left hand corner, and the chunky 24 pin in the middle right. Then we can install the motherboard. Phanteks cases almost always come with two of these standoffs with little lips on them in the middle which means the board basically clips into the case, in the right position, which makes it so easy to install all nine screws. It’s such a little detail, but makes a massive difference to the building experience. It’s amazing. Once those screws are in, it’s time for the cables. The 8 pin up top left, 24 pin middle right, USB front panel header below that, the front panel controls down at the bottom right, and the USB 2 header in the middle bottom, plus HD audio on the bottom left. You’ll also want to plug the included rear fan in somewhere – probably at one of the three headers at the top of the board. Finally, the CPU cooler’s fans. These are possibly the easiest fans to install ever, because ARCTIC has thought of something amazing here – screws preinstalled in the fans, and holders built into the heatsink, meaning you just push the fans on and… that’s it. How cool is that?! Then it’s just a case of connecting the fans to the CPU fan header – and the fans themselves let you daisy-chain them so you only need one header, which is even better. And yeah, once the side panels go back on, that’s it built!

When it comes to server operating systems, Linux, and Debian specifically, seems like the most logical choice. With the latest version of Debian on my Ventoy USB stick – we boot the system with the stick inserted, hit F1 to get into the BIOS, and first I’m actually going to update the BIOS. AMD and the motherboard makers have put a lot of work into keeping these boards updated for years after they launched, and there’s actually two years of BIOS updates potentially waiting for this board – realistically since we bought this recently it’s much more likely to have a more recent BIOS version on it, but it’s always worth checking and updating it to get the best security and performance. Once the update is done we can head back to the BIOS with the delete key, enable XMP so our RAM runs at the right speed, and then boot from the USB stick, pick Debian, then since we don’t need the full GUI installed, you’ll want to pick the ‘regular’ (non-graphical) install option, set up your drive, and when it asks what packages you want, disable GNOME and enable the SSH server and finish the install. Once it’s installed and connected to your network, you can SSH in from another machine – now it’s time for AMP. 

AMP is a frankly amazing bit of software for a number of reasons, first of which is that it’s a full game server management tool that lets you really simply and easily create game servers for anyone from your friends to paying customers to enjoy. Second is the customisability, both for things like themes, plugins and addons, but also things like a graphical settings editor so you don’t have to search around text files to configure your servers – although if you do need to manage the files, the file manage and SFTP support is ready and waiting. AMP is also extremely good value – the Standard edition is just £7.50 ($10) for a lifetime licence, or if you need a little more then it’s just £30 ($40) for the Advanced edition – which even includes extras like analytics and single sign on support! If you want to essentially resell AMP to your own customers – say you’re an online hosting provider and want to be able to offer game server hosting as an easy to use optional extra, there is an enterprise edition available with features like an automated deployment API and billing integration waiting for you!

As for installing AMP, on Debian it’s super easy. Just head to the AMP website and copy the install command. For my version of Debian, 13.1, I had to run apt install curl to install curl first, then I could run the script. It’ll ask you to create a username and password for your amp admin account, then a few options like using Docker – which is recommended – and creating an SSL certificate from letsencrypt by tying your domain name to the server. I’ve already used a domain I’ve got here, but if you’re running this from home you’ll either need a static home IP and a domain, or you’ll need to run a dynamic DNS service like duckDNS. To be able to access your server outside your network you’ll need to port forward both port 80 and port 443 on your router. With that done, the installer will automatically install everything you’ll need, and start running AMP in the background. Head to your domain name, or if you’ve set it up locally for now your local IP address and port 8080, and sign in to AMP. This is where you’ll want to include your licence key, then that’s it, you’re in!

Setting up a game server is basically three clicks. Click the “Create Instance” button, pick the game you want to set up – there are loads here, basically anything you can think of is here – in my case that’s Satisfactory, then hit “Create Instance”. It’ll take a minute to download the required files and get the instance up and running, but then that’s it, ready to go. You can configure the settings, like the max number of players, disable seasonal events, and either auto pause the server when no players are connected, or not. You can also add your own server branding if you want to, or even cooler is setting up scheduled events. I set one up so when an update to the game is available via SteamCMD it’ll automatically update and restart the instance. You might want to do that on a timed schedule instead of whenever it is instantly available, but there’s lots of options here – or in other words it’s very powerful. Right, let’s jump on that server!

Check out the video for some gameplay!

So, that’s how to build an incredibly capable game server, and get servers up and running with AMP – and thanks to AMP’s makers, CubeCoders, I get to give this system away! Now because shipping an entire PC is an expensive and frankly dangerous affair internationally, this is limited to the UK, but if you’re in the UK leave a comment with #AMPServer and what games you want to host with it and we’ll pick a random winner in two weeks! Keep an eye on my discord for the winner announcement – it’ll be in the general channel, at 8PM UK time on the third of October!

Once again I want to thank CubeCoders for sponsoring this video, and this giveaway, so if you want to host your own game servers, check them out at the link in the description below. It’s incredibly affordable, and amazingly well featured – and damn it’s easy to use. You can literally deploy servers with three clicks… Anyway, check them out with the link in the description, and maybe give their YouTube channel a subscribe while you’re at it. Thank you very much for watching, don’t forget to subscribe here too if you haven’t already, check out plenty of other videos in the end cards, and I’ll see you all in the next video!