Esports setup for classroom use

[jamesrhart]

We did it ourselves, all of the work was done in house except for the wrap on the rear wall which was designed with Lenovo and installed by them (this isn't shown in the photos).

[PotNoodleTech]

Did you have some sponsorship from lenovo then?

 

I tell you what it's amazing how some different colour and materials and a few LEDs can make a room look totally awesome.

[jamesrhart]

They paid for the wrap which is on the opposite wall, pictures below:

 

[PotNoodleTech]

Very nice.

[Dos_Box]

They paid for the wrap which is on the opposite wall, pictures below:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]71137[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]71138[/ATTACH]

 

I have to say, that is a very nicely designed room!

[MrWilliams]

I have been asked to look at setting up "eSports" for classroom use. Potentially using Rocket League.Does anyone have any experience at doing this? Shared machine installs etc are all going to be difficult I suspect.Any suggestions would be great!

I've just finished kitting out my room at school with PCs capable of running both Rocket League and Fortnite. I can help run you through some specs and where to buy from if you need?Specs on our PC's are:Ryzen 5 5600 CPUAMD RX6500XT GPU16GB RAMWe bought all our equipment from Scan who have been amazing.

[IzMark]

We went live with our e-Sports classroom in the summer and it has went reasonably well.

The only problem I have is with the games/launchers/anti-cheat software updates. All of which require an admin account to authorise if the student launches the game before the system account has had a chance to update it.

I purchased Microsoft Intune Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) and set that up to allow each of the games and their child files to be authorised but this stopped working within days as the MD5 Hash keeps changing for the executables.

 

We now plan to create a local admin account limited to these devices which really goes against our security best practices but needs must at the moment.

I use a utility called runasrob - it will elevate any apps you choose to run as admin so that you do not have to give out any local admin details etc. You can then integrate this into a script so that students/ staff can select which apps they want to run to bypass UAC - works very well :-)

[DaveMc]

For our e-sports room we used our inhouse design expertise along with initial concept work from top-tec. See below for our case study on their site.

Transforming Esports Education at Borders College | TOP-TEC

 

We still run into issues with the updates for epic launcher but there's now an understanding from the Academic team that this will alway be the case and we just organise updates as and when we can.

[PotNoodleTech]

45 minutes ago, DaveMc said:

For our e-sports room we used our inhouse design expertise along with initial concept work from top-tec. See below for our case study on their site.

Transforming Esports Education at Borders College | TOP-TEC

 

We still run into issues with the updates for epic launcher but there's now an understanding from the Academic team that this will alway be the case and we just organise updates as and when we can.

 

WOW

 

Fair play that looks amazing.

[grahamd22]

So the only way to get Rocket league working with students is that they need their own login ?  Will ports needed opening if we are planning on only doing it on a LAN connection?

[supportman]

I'd be interested to know if Mini PC's have reached the level to run games at 1080p yet so we can make our setup minimal. Does anyone know if the newer Ryzen chips can play games adequately without a dedicated graphics card and huge power supply?

[Cat_Jam148]

Not very well i'm afraid. You'll be getting sub 20fps in an old game like Counter Strike 2 on the lowest settings @ 1080p.

 

I have a 9700x in my personal rig and even that struggles with anything more that a 1080p YT vid, let alone games. 

 

There are the 3D chips from AMD but then you may as well stick a 5 year old cheap GFX card in

Edited June 18, 2025 by Cat_Jam148

[supportman]

How on earth are they getting games to run on those handhelds then haha?

 

Just searched this: 

 

 

I don't really follow gaming but I've had a request from staff to setup a small minimal gaming area. Just looking at options as we don't have space for big PC's.

[Cat_Jam148]

Aha, yeah those run an AMD Z1 Extreme which have a beefy CPU tailored towards gaming.

 

If I remember right it was the AMD 8700G which was the closest equivalent that consumers can buy. The 8700G has been out for a few years now so maybe the prices are a little better than they used to be.

 

Edit: Just checked, they seem to be better value for money now. Can get about 70fps in CS2 on medium at 1080 looking at the benchmarks.

 

You'd need a bit more RAM than a usual machine due to having no dedicated VRAM.

Edited June 18, 2025 by Cat_Jam148

[PotNoodleTech]

The modern minisforums mini pcs are pretty good.  The GFX can do basic 1080p but not triple A at high settings.

 

The 7945HX 32 core CPU they do is phenominal ive got one in my main rig and it ousted all of my previous high end CPUs and only uses 100 watts.

[grahamd22]

So I managed to get Rocket League working intermittently with our internet provider (LGfL) and I have managed to retrieve a working and non-working log file but I am unable to decipher the route cause of why it won't work consistently.  I thought it was because Epic use a vast amount of IP addresses for load balancing so our internet provider added the FQDN api.epicgames.dev instead of the large variety of IP addresses but this doesn't seem to have cured the problem.  I know when it will work as during the splash page it will say connected online when it works.  Would someone care to view the logs to interpret the problem?

[ChrisC]

Generally the traffic we've seen can go to all sorts of subdomains, so our workaround is to allow both of these domains for the esports machines (with time restrictions to stop anyone anytime just having a game when they feel like it):
*.epicgames.com
*.epicgames.dev

 

I'm not sure how current this info is, but these were the ports that needed to be open historically: 80, 433, 443, 3478, 3479, 5060, 5062, 5222, 6250, and 12000-65000.

[grahamd22]

Below is what we have currently set and every so often we get to the start screen and it says PRESS ANY BUTTON TO START but you can't press any button unless you are connected online successfully but api.epicgames.dev keeps using alternative IP addresses so we have added the FQDN api.epicgames.dev as a destination although it frequently is unable to connect online.

 

api.epicgames.dev        
c.evidon.com        
config.psynet.gg        
eos-general.s3.amazonaws.com        
epicgames.com        
epicgames-download1.akamaized.net        
js.hcaptcha.com        
Psy.net        
psyonix.com        
psyonix-rl.appspot.com        
rl-psy.net        
rocketleague.com        
unrealengine.com

 

Ports opened: 80, 433, 443, 3478, 3479, 5060, 5062, 5222, 6250, and 12000-65000
UDP: 7000-9000 (This is the primary range for game server communication)