Picking a VPS for HvH: Asia, EU, US benchmarks

HvH is uniquely sensitive to jitter. A 5ms spike turns into a missed shot; a 30ms spike makes resolver-fed cheats whiff entirely. Picking the right VPS matters more here than for any other gamemode.

What to optimize for

1. Single-thread CPU performance — srcds is mostly single-threaded. Higher clock > more cores.
2. Network jitter < 2 ms — measure with mtr from your target audience.
3. Bare-metal ish — shared CPU vCPUs cause tickrate dips. Look for "dedicated CPU" tiers.

Benchmarks (Q1 2026, srcds + 12 bots, mirror traffic)

| Provider | Tier | Avg srcds tick (ms) | 99p tick | Cost/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hetzner | CCX13 (4 vCPU AMD EPYC) | 13.8 | 16.2 | €13 |
| OVH | Game | 14.1 | 17.4 | €19 |
| Vultr | High Frequency 2c/4g | 13.5 | 18.0 | $24 |
| AWS | c6i.large | 14.4 | 19.1 | $30 |
| Linode | Dedicated 4GB | 13.9 | 16.8 | $24 |

Anything under 16 ms 99p is solid for 64-tick. CS2 internally targets 64-tick subticks; you want headroom.

Per-region picks

Europe

• Hetzner Falkenstein for EU-Central. Cheapest, best CPU/€, very low jitter to DE/PL/CZ/AT.
• OVH Strasbourg or Gravelines if you need DDoS-protected. €5-7 more.

North America

• Vultr High Frequency Dallas — covers most US, lowest jitter.
• OVH Beauharnois for east-coast players.

Asia

• Vultr Singapore or Hetzner Tokyo (if available, Hetzner Asia is limited).
• Path.net Singapore if DDoS is a concern (popular for SEA HvH).

South America

• Hostinger SP / OVH Vint Hill — Brazilian latency is a known pain. SP is the only sensible answer for LatAm.

Avoid these

• Shared/burstable VPS (Vultr regular, Linode shared) — tickrate fluctuates badly.
• DigitalOcean Droplets — fine for web, awful for srcds. The CPU steal is real.
• AWS t3/t4g — burst-credit CPUs WILL run out.

Specs to target

• 2 vCPU dedicated, 4 GB RAM. That's enough for one CS2 server + SourceMod + small overhead.
• Linux (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS). srcds runs fine on linux64.
• schedtool to pin srcds to CPU 0 — prevents context switches from migrating the process.

TL;DR

Hetzner CCX13 in Falkenstein for EU. Vultr HF Dallas for NA. Vultr Singapore for Asia. Skip burstable tiers entirely — they ruin HvH gameplay even if the marketing looks fine.