Windrose Hardware Requirements Calculator

Windrose Server Hardware Requirements by Player Count

Windrose is built on Unreal Engine 5 with streaming world chunks and per-region physics. The dedicated server allocates memory up front per loaded zone, so RAM usage scales non-linearly with player count. Use the table below to size your box.

Self-Hosting vs Dedicated Hosting

Self-hosting means running the Windrose dedicated server binary on the same PC you use to play. It's free, but you pay for it in RAM: the game client needs roughly 16 GB on its own, and the server needs another 8–16 GB depending on player count — a 24 GB minimum for a 2-player session, 32 GB for a full 10-player crew.

Dedicated hosting runs the headless server on a separate box, so the only RAM cost is the server itself. That also means the server stays up when you close the game, uptime isn't tied to your home internet, and routing doesn't need port forwards. Our Windrose hosting plans come pre-sized for 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 player slots with NVMe SSD storage by default.

Why Windrose Needs So Much RAM

Two reasons: Unreal Engine 5 and streamed world geometry. UE5 loads Nanite meshes, Lumen lighting data, and the Chaos physics scene into memory on the server side to keep authoritative state in sync with clients. That alone is a 4–6 GB baseline before a single player joins.

On top of that, Windrose streams world regions on demand. Each active region stays resident in server RAM for all players within range, and when groups split up the server has to keep multiple regions loaded simultaneously. That's why the jump from 2 to 4 players adds 4 GB, but from 8 to 10 adds almost nothing — by that point the whole active map is already resident.

Frequently Asked Questions