Addons drive memory far more than player count does — size for your addon list, not your slot count.
Sandbox, DarkRP, TTT, prop hunt — whatever you are running.
Garry's Mod punishes slow cores. Here is what we run and why it matters.
192GB DDR5. Source servers live or die on single-core clock speed.
High-clock Zen 4 in North America too.
Valve documents that dedicated servers ignore host_thread_mode and always take the non-threaded path.
DarkRP and most economy gamemodes need one to persist money, inventories and progress. Included.
We do not charge per slot. Set it wherever your gamemode and CPU headroom allow.
Point the server at a collection ID and addons download on start. SFTP for everything else.
No. The Source game loop runs on a single thread on dedicated servers, by design.
Valve’s own documentation is explicit that dedicated servers ignore the host_thread_mode setting and always take the non-threaded path. Some helper work — networking, filesystem, Workshop downloads — does run on other threads, but the simulation and your Lua run on one. A faster core beats more cores every time for a single busy server.
Facepunch does not publish a figure. Valve’s generic Source guidance is 512MB minimum, with 1GB enough for over 60 slots.
That guidance is old and generic to Source rather than specific to Garry’s Mod, and Garry’s Mod is unusual because addons drive memory far more than player count does. A vanilla sandbox server is light; a DarkRP server with a 3GB Workshop collection is not. The Steam store figures you may have seen are client requirements and include a GPU — they do not apply to a server.
Up to 128, set with +maxplayers. We do not charge per slot, so the number is yours to choose.
The 128 figure comes from Valve’s developer wiki; Facepunch itself publishes no cap. In practice the limit you hit first is single-thread CPU and how heavy your gamemode’s Lua is, not the configured slot count. It cannot be changed while the server is running.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| RAM | Not published by Facepunch. Valve’s generic Source guidance: 512MB min, 1GB for 60+ slots |
| CPU | No spec published. Game loop is single-threaded on dedicated servers |
| Install size | About 6.3 GiB |
| Player limit | +maxplayers, up to 128 per Valve’s wiki. Cannot change while running |
| Tick rate | 66.67 default (15ms interval), adjustable with -tickrate |
| Ports | 27015 TCP and UDP — game, query and RCON share one port. 27020 UDP SourceTV |
| Operating system | Windows and Linux. Default Linux build is 32-bit; a 64-bit branch exists |
| Server token | A Steam Game Server Login Token is effectively required, created against game ID 4000 |
Source: Facepunch’s Garry’s Mod server wiki and Valve’s Source Dedicated Server documentation .
Common questions about running a Garry's Mod server with us.