The Killd Board / Snow golems
How many snow golems does it take to crash a Minecraft server?
5,107 before the tick rate gave way, and 46,238 before the server died, the largest pile of mobs we have got to on the board. Set that next to iron golems, which broke it at 3,131, and you have the clearest measurement in the series of what hitbox size alone is worth.
Paper 1.21.11 · AMD Ryzen 7 9700X · 6GB allocated
Why snow golems cost so much
A snow golem and an iron golem run broadly the same behaviours: wander, spot a hostile, throw or swing. The difference is physical. A snow golem is roughly a third of the volume, so a pile of them tests far fewer collisions against itself, and collision cost is what dominates once entities are crowded into one chunk. Snow golems also throw snowballs and leave snow trails in cold biomes, both of which cost something, and it still was not enough to close a sixty per cent gap.
How we tested it
Everything spawned into a single chunk, in one pile, with the server left running until the tick rate gave up. The server ran Paper 1.21.11 on an AMD Ryzen 7 9700X with 6GB allocated, which is the same hardware and the same RAM policy as an ordinary Hostd plan. We watched TPS and tick times rather than guessing, wrote down the count where the server first fell behind, and kept spawning until it either died or made it clear it was not going to.
When you are deciding what a farm should produce, the size of the thing matters as much as its brain. Two mobs with the same AI can be more than half again apart on tick cost.
What this means for your server
If your own server is printing Can't keep up! Is the server overloaded? the cause is the same shape as this one: something in the tick loop is taking longer than its 50ms budget. Roastd reads your RAM allocation, view distance, player slots, JVM flags and logs and names which of those it is. No account, no world upload, no charge.
Questions about snow golems
Do snow golems cause lag in Minecraft?
Less than iron golems by a clear margin. Our test server stayed at full speed until 5,107 snow golems in one chunk against 3,131 iron golems, and we reached 46,238 before it died. The snowballs they throw and the snow trails they leave both add work, but the smaller hitbox saves more than those cost.
Why do bigger mobs lag a server more?
Because entities sharing space test each other for collisions, and a larger hitbox overlaps more neighbours in a crowded chunk. The count is the same; the number of pairs being checked is not. That is why iron golems fell behind at 3,131 and snow golems, running much the same behaviours in a smaller body, lasted to 5,107.
Elsewhere on the board
Keep reading
Rent the machine we keep breaking
Same AMD Ryzen 7 9700X, same hard-reserved RAM, same NVMe. Yours will not have 46,238 snow golems in one chunk, which gives it a considerable head start. Online in under a minute, with a free address, DDoS protection and a 7-day money-back guarantee.