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The Basalt team

That old PC in your closet is a game server

A weekend project. Install Linux and Docker, deploy Basalt, and give your spare hardware a second life.

Hardware upgrade cycles leave almost everyone with a spare machine: last generation's gaming PC, an office desktop rescued from recycling, a laptop with a broken screen. Any of them beats the specs of a mid-tier rented game server, and you already own it. Here is the weekend-project version of turning it into your group's server box.

What you need

  • A machine with 8 GB+ of RAM (4 GB works for small vanilla servers) and an SSD if possible. Minecraft loves single-core speed and disk I/O more than core count.
  • A wired ethernet connection to your router. Wi-Fi adds jitter your players will feel.
  • A USB stick to install Linux from.

Step 1: install Linux

Any mainstream distro works; Ubuntu Server or Debian are safe picks with years of guides behind them. During install, enable the OpenSSH server so you can manage the box from your main computer and put the monitor back in the closet.

Two quality-of-life settings while you're there: give the machine a static IP on your LAN (or a DHCP reservation in the router), and configure the BIOS to power on after power loss.

Step 2: install Docker

Basalt runs entirely in Docker, so this is the only dependency:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Log out and back in so the group change applies, then check docker ps runs without sudo.

Step 3: deploy Basalt

Follow the installation guide: a compose file, a few secrets in an .env file, and docker compose up -d. A few minutes later the panel is at http://<the-machine's-ip>:3000 from any browser in your house.

First-run screencast

From docker compose up to logged-in dashboard

light + dark variants

Step 4: first server, first friends

From the panel: connect the machine as a node, deploy a Minecraft instance from the official template, and enable a tunnel so friends can join without you touching router settings. Send them the public address; you're live.

A note on power and noise

A repurposed desktop idles around 30 to 60 watts. If it will run 24/7, that's real money in some countries, so consider suspending instances when nobody plays (stopping a server in Basalt is one click, and worlds persist). Also check the box for dust before locking it in a closet: future-you will not remember to.

Total cost so far: zero, minus the electricity. That's the entire pitch for self-hosting, and why we built Basalt around hardware you already own.