What Resources Are Needed To Play on a Modded Minecraft Server?

If you love Minecraft, modding the game is a great way to freshen your experience. The vast number of mods available allows players several options. While there are many styles and types of Minecraft mods, they are often limited in scope. Because of the narrow focus many mods have, it is common for modded Minecraft servers to combine mods. While this is a great way to make a server unique, remember that modding Minecraft will increase the demands on your computer.

Why Do Modded Minecraft Servers Demand More from Your System?

Without mods, running Minecraft is relatively easy on low-powered systems. The recommended system specifications include processors that have been on the market for over a decade since it came out in 2010. Computer technology has seen many advancements since Minecraft's original release. Many newer systems are more powerful than the hardware for which the game was designed. 

In addition to technological advances, Minecraft's popularity encourages its continued development. Since its initial release, Minecraft has seen numerous updates and patches. These patches included optimization and performance improvements that keep the game running smoothly. When you have an optimized computer, making creative builds on Modded Minecraft Servers becomes a lot easier as you will not lag as much which creates a much better experience.

Adding mods to the game changes things in several ways. Many mods add new materials to the game, while others add whole game mechanics. These increase the demands on the machine running the game by giving the core process more to do. Part of the reason this happens is because many of the mods are fan-made. While fans enjoy the game, they may not have the resources the game's developers have. This puts limits on what they can do. While Minecraft is a well-tuned gaming experience, only some mod developers have the time and labor needed to reach the same optimization level.

What Hardware Do You Need to Play on Modded Minecraft Servers?

You should keep four components in mind when optimizing a computer for play on Minecraft Modded Servers: your processor, memory, storage, and graphics card.

CPU Requirements

Your processor (CPU) is one of the most critical components you will need. Where many modern games tend to be graphics-heavy, Minecraft is far more reliant on your computer's CPU. Minecraft was written in the Java programming language, so it is easy to run on any system that can run Java. This was one way for Mojang to broaden the audience for their original release without optimizing and compiling the game separately for Windows and Mac. The cost of this portability can make it harder on the CPU.

Minecraft mods run on the same framework by necessity. To play on modded Minecraft servers, your CPU needs to interpret the base game and all of the relevant mods at the same time. Java was made for this sort of multi-threaded processing. The downside is that Minecraft relies on a voxel system, so your CPU also does most of the graphics rendering.

RAM Requirements

The base memory (RAM) recommendation for Minecraft is 4 GB. While many people can get away with as little as 2 GB while running Minecraft without mods, more RAM leads to smoother performance. To get the best performance, many people recommend at least 8 GB of RAM to keep frame rates high and load times low. By increasing the demand Minecraft places on your CPU, mods also increase the memory it takes to keep the game running smoothly.

Graphics Card Requirements

With the CPU doing most of the graphical work, Minecraft places little demand on a computer's graphics card. Minecraft uses voxel data to track objects and entities. This makes keeping the position of mods and blocks more demanding than rendering the textures. It is possible to get frame rates better than 60 frames per second with a powerful enough CPU.

With most mods, your computer's CPU is a critical component of your machine. However, several mods increase the demand for a computer's GPU. Shader mods are the most common mods like this, mods that increase the graphical fidelity of the game world will also require a beefier graphics processor.

Storage Requirements

The final component you will need to play on modded Minecraft servers is storage. You will need enough disc space for both Minecraft and your mods. However, storage type also has a significant impact on your experience. Traditional hard disc drives rely on moving parts to read and write data. This makes reading data from the disc slower than the speeds offered by SSDs. The improved read/write speeds of SSDs can result in shorter load times, especially for heavily modded games.

How Do You Find Modded Minecraft Servers?

Once your system is ready, you'll need a modded Minecraft server. Minecraft Best Servers is a great place to find the most popular Minecraft servers. Whether you are looking for a lightly modded creative server or an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink survival experience, we can help you find the best server.