This guide will walk you through building your own Cloud Gaming Computer. There are several use cases for this including running on old hardware not compatible or compatible with a game you want to play.
This guide will walk you through the basics of getting going, but you may want to do your own tweaking as you get comfortable. Keep in mind, THIS COST MONEY and if you forget to turn off your instance when you are not using it, you will be very unhappy with the cost. The instance used in the guide cost $.75/h to use.
I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY CHARGES TO YOUR AWS ACCOUNT! Turn off the instance when you are not using it!
Prerequisites:
- AWS Account
- Knowledge of the Windows Operating System
- Basic knowledge of AWS
Create EC2 Instance
Log in to the AWS Management Console
https://console.aws.amazon.com/
It’s best to select the AWS Region that is closest to you to provide the best experience since latency plays a large role in the experience. To change your region,
In the top right corner, you will see a region next to your name. Click on it and choose the region closest to you
Under find services, search for EC2 and click on it
Click on Launch Instance
Choose Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Base
For instance type, we need an EC2 with a GPU. For this, we are going to choose a g4dn.2xlarge instance. This instance costs $.74/h. You can choose another GPU instance, however, if you are wanting to play a 2K and 4K resolutions, you are going to want to choose the g4dn instance has it has the T4 GPU from Nvidia.
Click Next:
Leave default,
Click Next,
You can change the sizes of the drive as you wish. For this guide, I am leaving it as default,
Click Next,
Skip Tagging,
Click Next,
Choose to Create a Security Group. Name the security group something that will make sense to you. For example, I am going to name mine, EC2 Cloud Gaming
Click on Add Rule (For NICE DVC)
Choose Custom UDP
Port Range 8443
Source: You can enter your IP or leave open to the world. However, I strongly recommend you use your IP address. This will only allow your instance to be connected from your network. However, most home connections use DHCP meaning your IP address can change. You will need to update the security group with your IP each time it changes. You can find your IP by going here https://whatismyipaddress.com/
Click Review and Launch,
Review the settings you have chosen. If you are happy with the configuration, click on Launch
For Key Pair, choose Create a new key pair, name your key and download it. After that, you will click on Launch Instance.
Your instance will start to launch,
Click on View Instances
The Next step is to get your Windows Password so you can RDP into the instance and set it up.
Tic your instance and click on Actions then choose Get Windows Password, click on Choose File
Navigate and choose the PEM key that you created and downloaded during launching your EC2 instance.
Click on Decrypt password,
Copy the password into a safe space such as an encrypted text file.
Configure Instance:
Using your RDP Client, connect to the instance. You will need to get the IP of your instance. You can find this in the instances section under IPv4 Public IP.
Enter the IP address in and hit connect,
Enter the username Administrator and use the password provided,
If prompted, choose Yes
Once you get to your desktop, I recommend downloading Firefox for the first thing you do. This will make this a much smoother experience.
Installing Drivers
At the time of this writing, the latest Nvidia drivers have an issue that won’t allow you to change resolutions. You will need to use an older driver until the issue is fixed.
Copy and paste this into firefox to download the Nvidia drivers,
Run installer,
Click OK,
Click Agree and Continue,
Choose Express,
Wait for the drivers to install,
Click Close
Now, we have to make registry changes. Click on the start menu and type Regedit. Once you see the Regedit program, right-click and open as an administrator.
Go to, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global
Right-click in the right column and choose New\DWORD (32-Bit) Value
Name the Value vGamingMarketplace
Double click the new entry and change the value to 2 then click OK
Next, download this file,
https://s3.amazonaws.com/nvidia-gaming/GridSwCert-Windows.cert
Rename it to GridSwCert.txt and copy it to C:\Users\Public\Public Documents
Create a new User. Right now, you are using the Administrator account and that is not very safe as far as security goes.
Open Control Panel and click on User Accounts,
Click on User Accounts again,
Click on Manage another account,
Click on Add a user account,
Enter in a username and choose a password. Then click Next,
Click Finish,
Setup the NICE DVC Server. This will be the remote desktop client you will use to connect to your instance when you want to play games.
Go to https://download.nice-dcv.com/ go towards the bottom and click on Windows 64 bit under NICE DVC 2019.1 Server
After this download is complete, start the installation,
Click Next,
Click Next,
Click Next. If you want to choose USB Devices such as controllers, enable the USB device remotization.
Click Next,
Choose the user you created in the above steps, click next.
Click on install,
Click Finish,
Now, the next thing to do is restart your instance. While your instance is restarting, download the NICE DVC client to the computer you are connecting from.
Go to the website, https://download.nice-dcv.com/ and download the client that matches your OS,
Install it like you did the server software. Once it has installed, your instance should be back up and ready to connect.
Launch the DCV client that you installed, enter the IP of your ec2 instance and the port 8443, and click connect. For example, if your IP is 1.3.3.7 you will enter 1.3.3.7:8443
Format Storage
Click on the start menu, type Computer Management,
Click on Disk Management, and you will be promoted to Initialize Disk,
Click ok,
Right-click on the drive and choose New Simple Volume,
Click Next,
Click Next,
Click Next,
Name the drive and click Next,
Click on Finish,
Now you are ready to install your games. This will be the drive you will need to install your games on.
Now that you have your EC2 Instance ready for gaming, you may want to do to the following, but out of scope for this guide.
- Assign an Elastic IP to your Instance. This will keep your instance with the same IP. If you don’t do this, you need to make sure you have the correct IP from the AWS Management Console.
- Remove 3389 from your Security group as you will no longer need it
- Create a script to shutdown your instance after being idle for so long. Remember, IT COST MONEY to have instances turned on.
