So I’ve been playing Icarus with the wife and the optimization is hot garbage. Wife is hosting and pulling 10 fps with a Nvidia 3070TI
We enjoy the game so I start doing research. Turns out once you’ve played enough the database on the host just gets too big and chokes out the CPU threads since it can’t use more than 2 cores.
Answer is to migrate your world to a sepf hosted dedicated server. Say no more.
So now I got an excuse (wife approved) to setup a computer as a server and keep it running. I have an old HP SFF i5 16GB RAM with an SSD I’ve reimagined a few times for a home server.
Flashed it with Debian and setup the Icarus server in docker. Runs like a champ.
Bonus points. I hooked up a wattage meter and it idles at 1~2 watts!
I used to run an old gaming computer as a home server and it felt like $30 a month in electricity.
Edit: System idles at 19 watts. I had the meter plugged into the wrong device…
Now I can start throwing more stuff on there once I figure out backup for the game world incase I bork it.
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May as well get some more mileage out of docker and install pi-hole too.
What if you’re away from home and want to play, certainly a situation resolved by a mesh VPN like tailscale (or self-host headscale).
etc.etc.etc
If you want to host multiple things on that server I would suggest installing Proxmox VE. It’s Debian with everything necessary to create and manage containers and VMs. Everything is accessed from a Web interface and it’s super easy to access the terminals for the containers or use remote desktop for VMs you create.
The latest version added the ability to install docker images directly into Proxmox without needing Docker but if you prefer to use Docker then you can install Docker in a container and install your things in there.
Here’s a nice script to run afterwards to remove subscription nagging, remove enterprise repos that require subscription and add community repos.
https://community-scripts.org/scripts/post-pve-install
That site also has lots of amazing scripts to install and configure self-host projects!
A good project to try is Pelican if you want to have an easy way to create and manage game servers. It’s very simple to get the game servers up and running once Pelican is configured properly.
Oh I’m totally doing this. Thanks!!
Oh it looks like they added native support for docker just last year!
I wish you luck on your endeavors! 😁 Since I got recommend Proxmox it has completely changed my home-labbing experience for the better. It works great!
Feel free to ask if you have any questions about Proxmox and I will do my best to answer them. I am by no means an expert but I have a few peojects up and running and use NPMPlus to handle all the network routing.
If you play other games that can host servers, I’d recommend that you check out https://cubecoders.com/AMP
Makes spinning up and managing game servers a simple task.
Thanks!
I’ve seen a few solutions like this but turned off by cost. This one looks good.
I’m happy for your marriage
Happy wife happy life.
That idle power consumption doesn’t seem right. That’s less than a Raspberry Pi.
Well shit…
I checked and I had my meter plugged into the wrong device.
Idle is 19w still not bad!
That’s like 2 LED lightbulbs.Yeah, it sounds more plausible like it’s amperes
That would make it way too high at anywhere from 100W to 400W depending on where in the world they are.
Still more plausible than 1W
Not really, most SFF PCs top out below 70W at absolute maximum, 100W-400W at idle is improbable.
For reference, mine uses 7W on average running my home automation and some other things, when it’s actually idling it’s well below that.
OP says 12W, has it been edited?
It said 1~2 originally
Then I don’t see the problem. 12 is normal with additional SSD and a bit load
RasPi isn’t actually very efficient for what it is.
No that’s real, Raspi is even lower. My Lenovo Tiny were idling around 6W without the additional SSD.
That’s still a 5W difference.
I have other devices like a TV that require 1-2W when they are in standby/shut off.
OP’s number is way to low. The power supplys conversion loss itself will already be a few watts.
I see 12W in OPs post, was it edited maybe? 1W would be too low, agree.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters LXC Linux Containers Plex Brand of media server package SSD Solid State Drive mass storage VPN Virtual Private Network
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 11 acronyms.
[Thread #226 for this comm, first seen 9th Apr 2026, 12:20] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
First of all, congrats on your server!
But I was wondering, though I don’t really know much about Icarus. But why wouldn’t you just be able to run the server on the same machine? If it only takes two cores anyway, most modern systems should easily run that besides the game itself no?
Not saying this isn’t a better solution, just doesn’t seem necessary to create a server for just that. But now you get to enjoy the experience of how deep the self hosting rabbit hole goes. Have fun and good luck!
The intent of having a third machine is to allow either one of us to play without bothering the other.
She was hosting and if I wanted to play I’d have to poke her computer. It’s a gaming desktop so it also costs more to run.
This way I can play and leave her alone if she’s busy.
Ok, that’s a valid reason. But you didn’t touch on that in your post. You only talked about performance. Hence my wondering.
Valid observation. I was mainly excited about having an excuse to run a 24/7 server.
New games are horribly optimized. There are a lot of multiplayer games that if you run the server and client on same machine it goes to shit.
That seems purely resource bound. So as long as your pc has enough cores and memory I feel like it should work fine, can’t see what brings it down except excessive iops? . But I haven’t had much experience with newer games like this, so I can’t really dispute your experience.
The game runs a single core for your game session and multiplayer load. Limit of the game engine.
Not if you run it in two different processes. Then it’s exactly the same as your new setup.
That is correct. Most people run a dedicated server on thier gaming rig.
I just wanted the excuse to setup a home server.
Ok so I don’t quite understand why self hosting makes the situation better:
Turns out once you’ve played enough the database on the host just gets too big and chokes out the CPU threads since it can’t use more than 2 cores
Ok so you will have the same problem when hosting it on a dedicated server…
Wife is hosting and pulling 10 fps with a Nvidia 3070TI
I have an old HP SFF i5 16GB RAM with an SSD
Are you telling me that the old HP SFF has more performance than your wife’s PC?
I also don’t quite understand what using a dedicated server has to do with FPS because server calculations should usually not impact this expect when the game’s code is utter garbage and it performs server calculations on the rendering thread…
I used to run an old gaming computer as a home server and it felt like $30 a month in electricity.
Let’s assume that server somehow requires 1kWh per day (which is quite a lot). That would be around 30ct per day here in Europe which is like $10 a month. So not sure if your server was constantly running at 200W or your power plugs are coated with gold…
Yes the game is utter garbage.
Even the game dev recommends a dedicated server for multiplayer.
Its so bad that if you put a few hundred hours into single player you’ll end up with performance issues. It has to do with tracking all the changes to the open world. Trees cut, rocks mined and buildings. Link
My electricity costs are among the highest in the USA due to my location. Also surge pricing in the summer due to everyone running air conditioning. This was on a second gen i7 which was a 125w cpu and 1070TI I think. Running nonstop as a seedbox, network share, Plex server and more.
Have you thought about running proxmox rather than Debian? I found it to be useful for managing/tracking/backups of containers.
I tried Proxmox but found it way overkill for home use. I run ~50 Docker containers and I love Docker for its ease of use. Proxmox is an order of magnitude more complicated.
How do you manage backups? One big benefit of Proxmox is running containers in vms and easily snapshot/backup/restore whole vms.
Yes. It’s just a higher level of efficiency, portability, snapshots and backups.
50 containers…
I hope I don’t go that crazy.
I’d need a WebUI at that point I can monitor from a Workstation.
Hehe tbh I only run 5 😅 I found it useful when I had to diagnose some cpu hogging off one of the containers and the ease of backups. Even though have not needed it yet.
It’s worth noting that Proxmox uses Debian. It’s essentially a collection of Debian packages, and you can install Proxmox on top of an existing Debian system: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_13_Trixie
Proxmox lacks a Docker UI though, which is annoying. One of the reasons I’m using Unraid at home is because it supports KVM, LXC, and Docker, all in the same UI. (LXC is a plugin rather than being available out-of-the-box, but it works very well)
(and no, Proxmox’s new OCI container support isn’t it - that just converts the container to LXC and doesn’t handle upgrades)
Yeah I thought proxmax didn’t handle containers well. Main reason I’m skipping it for now.
Good to know I can stack it on debian though.
I eventually intend to start some funny stuff I wanted a full OS for.
If I shift my end goal to run in a container then that would make more sense.
I initially went for Debian because I had a deadline for us to get back to gaming together.
I’ve seen loads of people use proxmax. As a windows admin I wanted a OS as a stepping stone.
I run Brazzite on my gaming rig and mint on my daily driver laptop now. Getting there.
Honestly I left proxmox/virtualization OSes a while back for simple RHEL. I have Docker for most everything and the few things I need full virt for the features Cockpit provides are more than enough. If I ever get back into clustering I’ll look at proxmox again.
If you want a webui for the debian server that gives you logs, services, ssh terminal and more then I can recommend checking out Cockpit
https://cockpit-project.org/If you decide you want to you can install KVM/Qemu on the debian host to get into full virtualization that way. The webui can be used to configure and manage the VMs too with https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit-machines
edit: Cockpit also has a Docker manager, though I feel it isn’t full featured yet. I mostly used it to stop and start dockers from my phone.
https://github.com/chrisjbawden/cockpit-dockermanagerTotally fair. I also started with Debian for a Minecraft server, at the request of my partner. I might try out Icarus, is it cross platform?
Not sure if it’s cross platform. We’ve been having lots of fun with it.
Its interesting in the sense that one person can buy all the content and additional players can just buy the base game and join a “unlocked” server to enjoy everything.
I’ve seen similar pricing models and it’s kind of expensive but evens out the more people play with you.
I find it funny that advanced tech is explained away by you getting support from outer space. Vs games like Ark where you just magically know how to mess with electrical systems.
Starting with stone weapons is annoying but you can earn credits in game to start with 3D printed weapons/tools as you hop maps.
Proxmox with community scripts LXCs is crazy
Now I can start throwing more stuff on there once I figure out backup for the game world incase I bork it.
Step 1. Find out where the docker image you run saves the volumes
F.e. https://github.com/mornedhels/icarus-server saves here:
Volumes
Volume Description
/home/icarus/drive_c/icarus Server config files and saves
/opt/icarus Game files (steam download path)Step 2. Find a backup tool you like, f.e. https://docs.borgui.com/
Thanks for mentioning the game, saved it to my wishlist and hope to grab it for some co-op gaming come autumn. :D
That’s! Once I get backups going I can rest my mind since I can avoid an angry wife. She’s the builder and if we lose our house…
Icarus is a little pricey but we both have hundreds of hours of playtime now. Worth it.
Takes a long time to level up but that’s not bad since you slowly learn more about the game as you unlock stuff.
Main tip is to start open world and then do missions from open world.
Its confusing since you need to level up a bit before you can build the contact device to even accept missions!If you don’t start open world you need to restart your world every mission and that takes time.
So…
- start Open world
- Build a house.
- Mine some ore.
- build a furnace and smelt bars
- build contact device
- start actually playing
I want to backup the data and replicate a rebuild on a separate machine. Updated config to point to a better location.
My goal is to be able to rebuild completely from a failed disk. So restore backup to staged location then run the docker config to spin up all my stuff again.
Borg looks good!
