ATM10 server lag fix: digital miners, AE2, and chunkloaders

ATM10 lag almost always traces back to one of three causes: an unfiltered digital miner, an AE2 network past its size, or chunkloaded mob farms.

The short version

ATM10 lag nearly always traces to one of three things: a Digital Miner running without a filter, an AE2 network grown past what it can index each tick, or chunkloaded mob farms nobody turned off. Check those in that order before you consider more RAM, which usually is not the problem.

ATM10 lag almost always starts a few days into a fresh server: TPS sat at 20.0 on day one, sat at 12 to 14 on day five, and now nobody knows why. The cause is usually one of three things; check them in this order.

#Step 1: a digital miner with no filter

Mekanism's Digital Miner is the single biggest TPS killer in ATM packs. With no filter set, it scans the configured 32x256x32 region looking for blocks every tick. One unfiltered miner can take a server from 20 TPS to 6 on its own.

Find them with Spark:

/spark profiler --timeout 60

Open the flame graph link, look for mekanism.common.tile.machine.TileEntityDigitalMiner. Each one will be a flame with a player's name nearby in the world data. Ask the player to set a whitelist filter (specific ores only) or pause the miner when not in use.

#Step 2: an AE2 storage network past its size

Applied Energistics 2 networks scan their entire inventory on certain operations (craft, autocraft, some terminals). A network with 30 storage cells and 100,000 items is fine; a network with 200 cells, six subnets, and a million items will start to drag during peak interaction. Symptom: TPS dips when a player opens an ME terminal, recovers when they close it.

Two fixes that work:

  • Crafting CPUs. Move autocraft jobs onto dedicated Crafting CPU multiblocks so the main network is not doing the search.
  • Storage subdivision. Split bulk storage (cobble, dirt) onto a sub-network with one ME P2P tunnel so the main grid only indexes what is in active use.

#Step 3: chunkloaded mob farms

ATM10 ships several modded chunkloaders (Mekanism Anchor Upgrade, FTB Chunks claims with always-load). A chunkloaded mob farm running 24/7 piles up entities and item drops. Visit each chunkloader (/ftbchunks server-info shows them) and check entity counts:

/spark tickmonitor

Anything sitting at hundreds of entities per chunk with nobody nearby is wasted simulation. Either add a kill chamber, throttle the mob spawner, or unload when not in use.

#Step 4: check RAM as a last resort

If TPS is bad and the three causes above are clean, look at Dashboard → your server → Stats panel. If RAM is sitting at 95%+ on every tick, you are out of heap and the JVM is garbage-collecting too often to keep up. The only fix is more RAM: move to the 14 GB plan or split your active players across two servers.

#Where to go next

#Frequently asked questions

Why is my ATM10 server lagging?

In order of likelihood: an unfiltered Digital Miner scanning everything it can reach, an oversized AE2 storage network, or mob farms sitting in chunkloaded chunks with no kill mechanism. All three are tick-time problems, which means more RAM will not fix them.

How do I find what is causing ATM10 lag?

Install Spark and run /spark profiler start, let it run through a laggy period, then read the report. It names the mod and the method eating tick time, which turns guesswork into a list. /spark tps tells you whether you have a tick problem at all.

Will more RAM fix ATM10 lag?

Only if you are actually short of memory, which shows up as garbage-collection pauses and OutOfMemoryError, not as steady low TPS. Low TPS with healthy memory is a tick-time problem, and adding RAM to it changes nothing.

Written and maintained by the Hostd engineering team. Last updated 2026-05-23. Notice a mistake? Tell us.

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