All the Mods 10: how much RAM, and why it still lags
All the Mods 10 bundles several hundred mods into a single pack. That's what makes it interesting, and it's also why a server sized like a vanilla one collapses the moment somebody builds their first automated machine.
Why a heavy modpack changes everything
A vanilla server spends most of its time doing nothing. A modpack adds thousands of blocks that tick: machines, conveyors, generators, automated farms. Each runs code twenty times a second, on the same tick as everything else.
The upshot: what limits a modded server is almost never the number of players, but what those players have built. Two people with a factory load the server more than ten who are out exploring.
How much RAM, honestly
The baseline rule — 1 GB plus 300 MB per player, laid out in how much RAM your server needs — is for vanilla. For a heavy modpack like ATM10, reckon on two to three times more. In practice, below 8 GB you'll spend the game watching the server struggle. That is also our largest plan today (Diamond): it suits a small group that automates in moderation. For four or five players set on building big factories it will be tight — get in touch before ordering rather than finding out in game.
Mind the opposite trap: giving 24 GB to a server that uses 8 doesn't make it faster. An oversized Java heap lengthens garbage-collection pauses, and you pay for memory whose only effect is to postpone a problem.
The processor matters more than people think
Minecraft computes its world mainly on a single core. A server with sixteen slow cores will do worse than one with four fast ones. That's why we never sell below a full core: a server with a fraction of a core structurally cannot hold its tick.
What you can do yourself
- Lower the server-side view distance. It's the setting that changes the most, and the fastest: going from 12 to 8 chunks more than halves the work.
- Group your factories. Ten machines in one chunk cost less than ten scattered across the map, which force the server to keep ten areas loaded.
- Watch TPS, not FPS. The two are unrelated: our article on TPS vs FPS explains which one blames the server and which blames your machine.
- Find the culprit with a profiler. A single badly-tuned mod can eat half the tick — and it's rarely the one you suspect. Our article on modded server lag covers the method.
And installing it?
ATM10 installs from the panel by picking the pack from a list — no command line, no manual file transfer. The steps are in the modpack documentation.