ARK: Survival Ascended Server: RAM, CPU, and Config Tuning for 10–100 Players

ARK: Survival Ascended (ASA) rebuilt the survival formula on Unreal Engine 5.1, and the server software got noticeably heavier in the process. Client-side features like Lumen and Nanite don’t touch the server, but the world simulation — dino AI, structure integrity checks, save serialization, and network replication — still runs on a narrow set of threads. That makes clock speed the first decision, not core count. A 6-core CPU at 5.0 GHz will host a busier ASA server than a 16-core Xeon at 2.6 GHz. The second decision is RAM: ASA worlds grow without bound as players build, tame, and hoard, and memory pressure is the leading cause of mid-week crashes on under-provisioned boxes.

Realistic Hardware by Player Count

The numbers below are what operators actually see in production, not box minimums. ASA idles around 4–6 GB of RAM on The Island and climbs as structures and tamed dinos accumulate; expect 12–20 GB on an active 40-player server, and more if you run multiple maps on one machine.

Component	10–20 players	20–50 players	50–100 players
CPU	4 cores @ 3.5+ GHz (i5-11400 / Ryzen 5 5600)	6–8 cores @ 4.0+ GHz (i7-13700 / Ryzen 7 7700X)	8–12 cores @ 4.5+ GHz (Ryzen 9 7950X / i9-13900K)
RAM	16 GB	32 GB	64 GB
Storage	250 GB NVMe	500 GB NVMe	1 TB NVMe
Bandwidth	100 Mbps / 5 TB	1 Gbps / 10 TB	1 Gbps / 20 TB+

The most common mistake is buying a many-core server CPU with low clocks. ASA’s tick and dino pathing are latency-sensitive: buy the fastest single-core performance you can afford, then add cores for multi-map clusters. If you plan to run The Island, Scorched Earth, and Aberration on one box, budget cores per map — each instance wants at least two dedicated cores plus headroom for the OS.

Installing the ASA Server with SteamCMD

Ubuntu 22.04 is the standard host OS. Install SteamCMD and create a dedicated service account:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y steamcmd lib32gcc-s1
sudo useradd -m -s /bin/bash ark
sudo -u ark -s
steamcmd +force_install_dir /home/ark/asa-server +login anonymous +app_update 2430930 validate +quit

The ASA server is Steam App ID 2430930 and downloads roughly 25 GB. Launch it with a startup script that sets the map, session name, and ports:

#!/bin/bash
./ArkAscendedServer.exe TheIsland_WP?listen?SessionName="MyServer"?MaxPlayers=40?Port=7777?QueryPort=27015?RCONEnabled=true?RCONPort=27020 -log -usecache -NoBattlEye

Run the script under screen, tmux, or a systemd unit so the process survives SSH disconnects. A minimal systemd unit for ASA looks like this:

[Unit]
Description=ARK ASA Server
After=network.target

[Service]
User=ark
WorkingDirectory=/home/ark/asa-server
ExecStart=/home/ark/asa-server/start-asa.sh
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Ports to Open

Port	Protocol	Purpose
7777	UDP	Game client connections
7778	UDP	Raw UDP socket (RakNet)
27015	UDP	Server browser query
27020	TCP	RCON remote management
32330	UDP	Steam P2P connectivity

On a rented box, confirm the provider is not filtering UDP upstream — many cheap plans rate-limit UDP, which shows up as rubber-banding long before the CPU is the bottleneck. A simple check is iperf3 -u against a second machine to measure packet loss and jitter on the exact ports you will use.

GameSettings.ini Tuning

Edit ShooterGame/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/GameSettings.ini to cap tame counts and stabilize memory use:

[/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode]
ServerTickRate=30
MaxTamedDinos=500
bIncreaseMaxTameLimit=true

[/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameUserSettings]
bDisableBloom=false
bDisableFog=false

Two settings matter more than the rest. ServerTickRate at 30 is the sweet spot for most communities — 60 Hz costs roughly double the CPU for a gain most players cannot feel on a survival server. MaxTamedDinos is your real memory guard: every tamed dino adds save-serialization cost, and tribes that hoard thousands of dinos are the usual cause of save bloat and rollbacks.

ASA servers also accumulate memory over long uptimes. A nightly restart during off-peak hours prevents out-of-memory crashes:

0 5 * * * /home/ark/asa-server/restart.sh

Have the restart script send an RCON warning 60 seconds before it kills the process, so online players can log out safely instead of losing gear mid-fight.

CurseForge Mods and Crossplay

ASA pulls mods from CurseForge by ID at startup, so there is no manual file management. Append -mods=887336,903647,895132 -crossplay to the launch line; players on Steam, Xbox, and Windows Store auto-download the mods when they join. Mods are the first thing to audit when performance degrades — a badly written mod can double tick time. Test each new mod on a staging instance for a day before adding it to the live server.

Backup Before You Need It

Save files live in ShooterGame/Saved/SavedArks/ and run 1–5 GB depending on map and structure count. Trigger SaveWorld via RCON, then rsync the folder off-box. Keep 7 daily, 4 weekly, and 1 monthly snapshot, and verify restore integrity weekly — a backup you have never restored is a guess.

Common Failures and Fixes

• Server invisible in the browser — QueryPort 27015 is closed, or the SessionName contains characters Steam rejects. Open the port and simplify the name.
• Connection timed out — Ports 7777/7778 are blocked at the provider’s network edge, not just the OS firewall. Test with a UDP port check from a second machine.
• Mod downloads fail — Invalid CurseForge IDs or the server cannot reach the CDN. Validate the IDs and check egress connectivity.
• OOM after weeks of uptime — Tamed dino count is too high; lower MaxTamedDinos and enforce the nightly restart.
• Corrupt saves — Shorten the save interval in GameUserSettings.ini and always verify backups after a crash.

Measure Before You Upgrade

Before buying more hardware, watch actual usage for a week of peak play. htop shows per-core load — if one core pegs at 100% while others idle, the bottleneck is single-thread latency, and a higher-clocked CPU helps more than extra cores. free -h tracks RAM creep, and nload shows whether the 100 Mbps port is the ceiling. Server tick rate at 30 keeps the simulation smooth without the CPU cost of 60 Hz on a busy map.

If the OS layer and uptime management are not your project, bare-metal game server hosting bundles high-clock CPUs, NVMe, and DDoS mitigation so you only manage the game itself. For a cluster running multiple maps, confirm the plan’s core count scales with your player ceiling.