Game issues occur when playing on a local server setup.
Game issues occur when playing on a local server setup.
Hello, I constructed my initial home server using surplus components and some solid hard drives. Currently, I'm attempting to install my Steam titles on the server to reclaim space on my gaming PC's 1TB SSD. City Skylines runs smoothly. Magic the Gathering experiences slight lag but remains stable. PUB G completely fails to launch. No errors—just no startup. After about two months of searching, I'm struggling to find anyone facing a similar setup. Could you help identify where things might be going wrong? Server details: OS: TrueNAS Scale CPU: AMD Phenom II, X4 955 4-core RAM: 16GB (two sticks) Services: 12.2GiB, ZFS Cache 2GiB, Free Storage: 1.3GiB Space available (iron wolf – 7200 RPM) Network: 1000Mb/s twisted pair to a 1gb switch. No GPU used for hardware acceleration (MOBO won't support it; if upgraded, I'm planning an Intel A770). IP Address: Not assigned. Steam communicates via the "Z:" drive. I have a "SteamLibrary" folder and a "GAMES" folder. I'm very new to servers—could you share a YouTube tutorial or step-by-step guide?
It’s not advisable to configure this setup since performance problems are unavoidable. Keeping your game files on an SMB share and retrieving them over the network introduces significant delays and limits speed to about 100 MB per second compared to local storage. The optimal approach is to implement iSCSI and connect via a 10 gig connection. Benefits become noticeable only when multiple client machines share overlapping Steam libraries, allowing deduplication on the NAS. I suggest placing your games on local storage and saving unplayed game files on the NAS for quicker access. (100 MB per second offers much better performance than repeated downloads.) For advanced users, you can configure a caching service on the NAS to avoid manual file transfers.
In short, I hit a big problem with my Truenas scale setup because I had to switch to Bluefin. That means I need to reinstall every app. Since I’m new to coding, I’m struggling with backing up data for each app, installing updates, and restoring old files. This issue really got me into a deep dive about NAS storage setups—like moving from a 1GB network card to a 10GB switch and router. My NAS has a dual 1GB PCIe card, but I’m unsure if I need a new 10GB card or just upgraded cables. My goal is to keep all games on the NAS and have them updated automatically, then move them to my gaming PC when ready. If upgrading hardware feels too much, should I stick with what I have or look for a cheaper solution?
Steam allows direct file sharing between devices on the same network. You might set up a Linux virtual machine on your NAS that always contains Steam with your games preloaded. When you transfer from another computer, it should transfer at normal LAN speeds. https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/vi...-B012-CE43 This is just a suggestion, I haven't tested it yet.