i played about a total of 20 minutes of minecraft in my life and i gave up every
time because i had no idea what the heck i was even supposed to do so when Jake
stormed into my office and asked to spend work hours building an official
LTT minecraft server my answer was fairly concise
no of course Jake being Jake he went ahead and did it unofficially on his own
time then came back into my office saying look how cool this is by the way
now that it's all cool you can have it if you compensate me for those hours
and he's right it is pretty cool so
here we go if we're gonna make a minecraft server it better be the best
server that money can buy so with the help of protocase we're going to design
fabricate and then deploy the ultimate
minecraft server build with not one but
two 9900k processors inside a single 2u
chassis with a whole heck of a lot of water cooling today's video is brought
to you by rozzy stay cool and comfortable for hours with rossi's new
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so our use case here is obviously very specific we want to be able to run as
many ball in minecraft server instances as we possibly can and because minecraft
java edition is so dependent on single threaded performance
this is one of those special cases where running xeon or epic in a server would
result in a much worse experience for the users than frankensteining together
some desktop hardware so then given we were after the highest single threaded
performance possible and Intel hadn't launched the 9900ks yet we hooked up
with the guys over at silicon lottery who were able to provide us with a
discount on a core i9 9900k CPU that's
been pre-validated to run at five gigahertz on all cores so basically it's
a 9900 ks then for our second system we
stole the bin's 9900k from gigabytes waterforce kit which means we should be
able to have eight separate minecraft server instances all with their own
overclocked 9900k core per CPU for a
total of 16. not too shabby
but wait a second Linus you can't run dual cpus on consumer hardware well you
can if you run two motherboards so our clever idea was
to grab a pair of overclocking capable mini itx motherboards and then cram them
into a single case we settled on the ASUS strix z390i now this kind of a
deployment could have negatively impacted the amount of RAM we could
install but thanks to some recent developments in memory technology we can
actually equip each of our boards with these double density dimms allowing us
to fit 64 gigs of RAM onto each of our
itx systems so java minecraft servers want about four gigs of RAM per instance
which means that we can run a handful of those with extra RAM left over if we
want to run a couple of our instances in a non-standard configuration with large
mod packs which would need to be stored in system memory now if you're running a
simple minecraft server for you and your frames storage size probably isn't going
to be a huge concern but on our system we're going with dual 1 terabyte m.2
NVMe ssds in a software raid 1 configuration for each board this allows
us to load many different game modes onto our systems and allows us to use
moderation and management tools like core protect which logs every single
interaction that takes place on the server so modification to a block uh
adding or removing something from an inventory etc etc so griefers can be
dealt with more easily as a badge each interaction is
pretty small in terms of storage size but it adds up pretty quickly if you've
got hundreds of players and weeks of logs now because a standard atx power
supply unit won't fit in our 2u thickness target we opted for an 800
watt sfxl unit from silverstone that should still give us a ton of headroom
even though it's going to be powering both systems through this fancy fantax
power splitter that they don't sell anymore for whatever reason probably
because no one wants to do that right uh by the way thanks person from twitter
for sending that to us you rock so then
that's a lot of hardware to cram into something this thick
so rather than yoloing it um we started by
laying out the components first in autodesk autocad to get an idea of how
long our chassis was going to end up needing to be with all the cooling that
we wanted to cram into it the original plan was to run regular 360 millimeter
pc radiators like in our water cooled transcode server but since we did that
project alphacool has actually started making 80 millimeter radiators
specifically designed for use in 2u servers they even have mounting holes on
the sides of the radiators so you can just screw them in from underneath the
chassis these things are freaking sweet
with the layout complete Jake started on the 3d design we took some cues from
backblaze's storage pod servers but scaled them down to meet our 2u
requirement this means most of the chassis is composed of one large sheet
for the bottom and sides with screw and modular panels for the front back and
top of the case we then added some flare to the front
with LTT logo fan grills lots of holes for our radiators and then a big old
cutout up front so that we could mount a five and a quarter inch bay reservoir it
happens to fit in our 2u form factor absolutely perfectly and allows us to
easily monitor our coolant levels without pulling the system out of the rack because of the standardized 19-inch
rack mount width we couldn't fit our power supply in the back of the case if
we also wanted access to both of our motherboards i o so we took some
inspiration from modern small form factor pc designs and opted to
internally mount the power supply and then plug it in with a cable
pass-through that we got whipped up by infinite cables after that Jake added
some small chassis support bars in the middle of the case to keep it rigid made
a huge cutout in the top panel for some acrylic then we sent over the designs to
protocase so this type of a one-off chassis is the perfect thing to have
fabbed up by a company like protocase their no minimum quantity policy and two
to three day lead time for most projects is practically unmatched in the industry
and that's made them the choice for more than 14 000 engineers and makers from
around the world including at companies like nasa boeing google mit and more now
they did want us to mention however that the cost of a one-off case like this
would be anywhere from fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars meaning it
wouldn't be practical for the average home gamer but for our purposes this was
absolutely perfect so now it's just time to show you the process of throwing the
pieces together for our dry fit before
we get started on the finished build so i guess it starts with the unboxing
and bubble wrap what is this
acrylic that's like the top panel okay cool or part of it anyways
oh my god if that cracked it would be very bad
it's not gonna crack you just want the world to burn hey oh stop
ah it doesn't make a cool noise that'd make
a cool noise oh some assembly required for our
chassis here normally they will assemble it for you but some of these bits were
easier and safer to ship separately so
i don't actually oh that's the power to play
ah what was that i fixed the kit
hopefully ifixit isn't sponsoring this episode
oh check this out guys i spent far too much time on that that
is our fan grill check it out LTT logos all up in this
biz it's gonna look so great when there's just like beige and brown behind
it too
popping it oh this is sick
i know thank you all right so here it is guys
this is the back of our chassis where our two motherboards go as well as
our power pass through they're a little bit offset you'll notice and that's so
the motherboards actually sit centered relative to each other in the chassis
ooh but did we forget to put rail mounts on it uh
it would appear so we can just tap those right we could also just like let it
rest on something else then over here is the business end so
this is where our five and a quarter inch bay res
and on the outside yep oh is that going to
increase the probe i don't think it does it must go on the inside i designed it
it definitely goes on the outside i don't believe it thank you very much protocase fixed your bad design because
if it's on the outside it wouldn't slide into a room oh i mean like on the outside like it goes in from this side
no it doesn't go on no no yeah i see i see where the miscommunication is now it
like it comes in from the outside yeah yeah okay that's fine you can't put it
from the inside you're drunk Jake no it's not how it works
the top is freaking awesome so as you can see it's going to be basically all
acrylic tops so we can see all of our water cooling components in there oh wow
what the hell that is some strong plastic on that
little thing yeah i had to use a knife to get it off ow
oh my god what did you just do just almost got myself in the eye oh should
we just use the vibration dampers look at this oh yeah
this is gonna be real tight Jake wow those look terrible yeah it doesn't
really just use the screws okay fine forget it
oh god these this plastic is like oh
it's like kevlar reinforced plastics what the hell
i am really into these they fit in a 2u and they're like really designed for it
like these recessed fittings allow you to sandwich fans in between them if you
want these side fittings and these rear fitting holes
allow you to have any flow configuration that you want
it's got mounting holes on the bottom super cool
copper's expensive dude oh boy
sweet sometimes things just work
so we're not going to plumb it up today but in order to do a decent test fit we
do at least need to mount our radiators and put the fans on them we've designed
our rads to screw in from the bottom and then go together so tightly so we're
gonna have what is it three of them three yeah so Jake's working on the last
one right there it's gonna be sick you pop these together there we go
how much radiator is that my friends why are you taking out that one it goes here
i'm taking one off i might as well take them both off now would be a really bad
time for these screws to not line up oh oh what it has to go in the other way
oh god really yeah no it's right what are you talking about
oh wait it's flipped on the other side what the crap yeah it's fine no i
thought about this very extensively when i was doing this because i really didn't want to hold it up
whoa these are going in no problems perfect
everything lines up great huh it's always nice when things work out hey i'm
gonna give myself a cookie for that oh wow
how sure are you that that acrylic is going on here with these cables oh
not very that's pretty tight like we were thinking maybe we could
put it here or something but um i don't think so so then we came up with
the idea so our reservoir fits
perfectly these ports over here these are for like
lights fill drain and then this is the inlet
and that's the outlet it uses a d5 pump i don't think it's technically a d5 is
it not technically a d5 no vpp 655t it's based on the same it's a d5
but yeah it has variable speed control on there nice so it's a d5 vario yeah so
our outlet is going to come out here go into our radiators and our inlet is
going to come probably all the way from the front up the side
that's going to be a long yeah sorry the back that is going to be a long tubing
run oh no they're too loose oh it's these
stupid that's actually a problem we will just
not put in the i o shield and we'll just thread them in not quite all the way
you know what actually take hold on a second with them not quite screwed in
all the way it lines up perfectly so we can just put some loctite glue in these
well it's a bit high not barely look at it well look at this side this side's
not high yeah but there's a clip you see this like that
exposed metal is like that on that side too it's as close as anything in this
project wow wow so normally you would install
your m.2 SSD under the spreader and put it back on but it has this gigantic
heatsink on it so we're going to go ahead and just
install it and leave it like that wait
we have a problem Jake all right how do we install the second SSD that's on the
bottom right but we have the crazy space so it's fine we have a crazy space this
much space so we've got the bottom one installed there
there's our dual ssds af
now obviously we're aware that this cooler is not going to fit in our case
might stick out the top a little bit you know but again this is just test fitting
we are going to move to water cooling for the finished build um where's our
power supply go um it's gonna go right here
facing the wall here it is sfxl 800
watts 120 millimeter fan do you see that it's not really
necessary but this server is going to be shockingly quiet so that's going to go
kind of like what their-ish okay so yeah that can go there this will go in
between the boards right about yeah this is plenty long
make sure the total power consumption of your two motherboards is not higher than
452 watts of your motherboard oh boy
screw it wow this thing is pretty crusty
hey guy on twitter sent it to us it was sitting in his closet for like a year so
it sure was oh yeah i guess we could do that
just give it the ol wiper yeah
should be fine it might not be pretty but it'll work all right
there now for real it's done uh we can't slide the server onto the table because
we haven't shaved the bottom of those standoffs yet oh we could just seat it um i don't want
to scratch the tape this table's so banged up already you can barely they stick out like this far really
we would be gouging that table put it out with the water from here oh
my god there goes the bay reservoir
it's great because you almost did it before and then actually did it now is
it cracked why didn't we move that you know what it's fine no it's fine don't
get it what if it's not it's fine it's sealed it's fine are you sure yeah it's
fine all right so this is it we've got our minecraft server set up this is just one
and we are ready to do a quick test so i just go now right yeah we're good
for it good to go to tell you the ip but yeah scanning for games on your local
network 6.180.
nope 10.20.6.180 i know how to type in an ip
smart guy i'm not saying you're stupid i just i'm firewall thing or something on
a local connection well i mean Windows has a firewall thing i have to click
away i don't know about your Linux oh my god maybe
yeah i'm pinging you and nothing's happening
did you just say you are an ass load you're an ass load hey i helped a thing
you did i was just so astounded that the minimal install of this os comes with a
pre-enabled firewall hey um do you want to fly do i want a
what fly a fly do you want to fly no i
want to i want to craft you just you hold the button you don't it takes this
long to harvest one friggin piece of wood you're punching it with your hand
well you tried to cut down a tree with your hand before yeah well then that's totally unrealistic for a completely
different reason and wait why does the tree stay like this how does that work just like so is it
just an automatically generated world yeah so there's like a seed for every
world that's like what it's basically i understand what i see yeah type slash
speed i'm gonna go really fast look at that world generate baby we
haven't even overclocked a server either wow
we ripping boys i'm gonna crank the server to like 32 render distance or
something crazy like that i mean 32 seems like a lot why don't we just do
like i already set it to 32. okay ah it's more it's uh it's chugging a little
it's trying that's a lot of rendered ten ten of ten
definitely trying oh no the poor server how's our CPU doing over there oh oh
we're we're pegged at 100 we're at 100 okay so this is it this is peak
minecraft server well we haven't even overclocked yet what do you mean so this
is all being generated in real time this is very unrepresentative of what we
would actually do oh yeah no this is totally unfair oh boy
it's it's not having a great time right now
it's trying woo there we go oh
i thought it just froze oh no you're just letting it it's doing it i love it
some of us are adults and have things to do Jake so stay tuned for part two we're
gonna water cool that thing we're gonna overclock that thing and we're gonna get
it live so you guys can join see you there
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video description so thanks for watching guys see ya