Old laptop as Dedicated Server

[chain220]

I've got an old laptop, which I still use for occasional things such as web browsing and whatnot when I'm just laying in bed or am too lazy to get to my desktop. I was looking to run a dedicated server for probably CS:S on this machine. I'm guessing it should be alright to support a server with a fair amount of users. My question is how do I go about optimizing the laptop for dedicated server usage, and how many users should I generally be able to support?

Specs for the laptop are:
2-GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60
2GB RAM (not sure of the speed, assuming it doesn't matter too much)
200 GB 4200 RPM Hard Drive
ATI Radeon X1250 Video Card (assuming this doesn't matter either)

 

[voiidwulf]

The specs are fine for a CSS server AFAIK, the most important thing will be your internet connection. What is your upload/download?

I guess to optimize it you would want to disable as many unnecessary processes/programs as possible. You probably won't even want to have Windows Explorer running.

 

[chain220]

Yeah, those were basically my exact thoughts. According to speedtest.net, my download is 27.52 Mb/s and upload is 1 Mb/s.

 

[voiidwulf]

Alright, with those speeds you should be able to host a server for about 15-20 people.

And as you guessed, the video card doesn't matter. The RAM may matter for something more demanding, but for a CSS server it isn't going to limit anything.

 

[chain220]

Right. That makes sense, thanks for the help. Also, if I were to run another server on the machine.. say a TeamSpeak 3 server, what type of performance hit would the CSS server take?

 

[voiidwulf]

A TeamSpeak server isn't that demanding. I don't think the performance would be affected that much.

 

[chain220]

Alright. Sounds good, thanks.

 

[chain220]

Best answer selected by chain220.