Don’t know if this Reddit is the best place to ask this but here we go.
I’m the guy in my friends group that always hosts servers for us whenever we want to play some games where dedicated servers are just better.
Sometime in December we wanted to play Ark and I’ve done many servers for Ark in the past but I’m kinda wondering if it’s cheaper to tun a dedicated computer 24/7 just for the server or if it’s better to pick a hosting service?
Nitrado would cost 12€ for 30 days. Is self hosting cheaper?
It is generally cheaper to pay for hosting if that’s all you’re doing.
You don’t need a GPU to host a server, just a decent cpu and a decent amount of RAM.
I’m not sure how well it works hosting on the same pc as you’re gaming on. I’d expect it would lower performance for both to some degree.
You can use a power calculator to get a rough estimate of the costs.
For example, a pc running 24 hours a day at 0.30/kwh using 150w would cost just under 30 per month.