Hardware & Technical Trying to upgrade PC for Elite

[Krooksbane]

I’m sure many of you have heard this before. I want to upgrade my PC so I can use VR. I currently use voice attack, and have a HOTAS.
I want to buy a new PC, but I’m not very educated on modern PC’s and what constitutes as “good” anymore. Can anyone give me a layman understanding of what I should be focused on buying and what price range I should expect?

Thank you

 

[MickyG1982]

Intel or Ryzen (AMD) and do you have a particular budget in mind?

 

[Rob At Work]

GTX 1080Ti minimum

 

[Krooksbane]

GTX 1080Ti minimum

What is that exactly?

 

[Krooksbane]

500-1000?

 

[Krooksbane]

I meant 500-1000 dollars

 

[GJ51]

That's just the video card

You need to provide more details regarding your budget

We are about 6 months or less away from the next generation CPU rollout from AMD. I'd suggest your money will be better spent once that happens.

You need to be clearer in your communications. Initially it reads as if you want to upgrade a PC, but it's clear you are looking to purchase a new PC???

Your current PC may be capable of an upgrade just by purchasing a new video card, but that's not easy to evaluate given you haven't provided details on your current PC.

HTH

 

[Morbad]

I meant 500-1000 dollars

Quite a tight budget, if you expect this to cover an entire VR capable system.

As GJ51 mentions, knowing what you have on hand will make it easier to determine what you need.

 

[Krooksbane]

I basically have a Pentium I 5 chip, 16 meg ram, 4 gig Nividia video card

 

[MickyG1982]

Make things easy, post your DXDiag report.

You may already have a system that can do it without too much upgrading but specifics help.

 

[dubsdj]

I basically have a Pentium I 5 chip, 16 meg ram, 4 gig Nividia video card

16meg of RAM, are you on Windows 3.1?

The computer I built roughly 4 years ago is as follows:

Intel I7-4790k with a corsair watercooler (Not expensive)
Maximus Ranger VII motherboard
16(gig) of ram
Solid Sate Drive
Be Quiet 750w 80plus Power Supply

Graphics card upgraded to Nvidia 1080ti (So I could play in 4K)
If you don't intend to run in 4k then you don't need that sort of card.
VR runs OK on a lesser card, used to have an ATI Radeon (4gig).

Game runs very smoothly.

 

[Para Handy]

I basically have a Pentium I 5 chip, 16 meg ram, 4 gig Nividia video card

I presume you mean 16GB of ram - so that's ok.

i5 could be OK but depends on which one and what its clock speed is, Elite is more GPU dependant whereas say FSX is CPU heavy.

Your issue I suspect will lie with the graphics card. You don't mention the card's GPU but in any case if it is a 4GB card it probably won't handle VR very well. I have a GTX 1070 8GB and that ran Elite in a Rift with no problems. I have an almost identical computer but with my old GTX970 4GB and I never even considered trying the Rift on that.

 

[GJ51]

Go here and buy as much as you can afford

https://www.digitalstorm.com/

 

[Krooksbane]

Yes, I meant gigs. It’s windows 7, I’m at work at the moment so I can’t check the finer details of the video card. Regardless, I know it’s not capable of handling VR.
If it’s possible for me to save up for the 1080 video card and be VR unit itself, I’d prefer that.

 

[MickyG1982]

Yes, I meant gigs. It’s windows 7, I’m at work at the moment so I can’t check the finer details of the video card. Regardless, I know it’s not capable of handling VR.
If it’s possible for me to save up for the 1080 video card and be VR unit itself, I’d prefer that.

Again, we really need to know specifics, there are 8/9 generations of i5 for starters 4 gig nvidia card might mean anything up from an Nvidia 690 (which isn't VR Capable) to the GTX 970 (which is, in a limited fashion)

 

[Krooksbane]

i5 3.20ghz
16384mb ram
Direct x 11
Windows 7 64 bit
Nividia gforce gt 730
4095 mb memory
Hope that helps

 

[GJ51]

Try here

https://thebottlenecker.com/calculator

You can buy the latest greatest GPU made, but it can still be choked by not having enough CPU or memory.

Plug in what you have then see what GPU matches your hardware for best performance and/or see what you might need to do to get the most out of a GPU you might be thinking about.

I looked at both a Core i5-3470 and a Core i5-650

Both look to be inadequate for VR

HTH

Looking at what you've posted so far, I'd really suggest you save up for a new system you can purchase that will do what you want. VR takes a lot of horsepower in a well set up system. In that you seem very inexperienced in what you need to know in order to do proper hardware upgrades, I think you'll be terribly disappointed at the outcome if you attempt to upgrade your current system. As has been pointed out, "a Core i5" hardly describes the CPU considering all the iterations of Core i5 available. Memory is similar in that you could have DDR3/DDR4 running at one of a wide range of clock speeds, all of which affect performance. Motherboard chipsets are a whole nother issue.

A really good PC build matches hardware so that the integrated build gets the most bang for the buck and will last well into the future. It's not as easy as it sounds unless you really get into the details of specific hardware configurations.

I've been postponing a new build for 3+ years as I didn't see a confluence of technology affording the opportunity to get matching hardware that was new technology. It appears that the next window will be late summer when AMD's Zen 2 tech arrives with PCIe4 and hopefully some reasonably priced video cards. So when the tree is ripe I'll be looking at M.2 SSD, Zen 2 Threadrippers with 64 PCI lanes and probably a 2080Ti and 64GB of DDR4.

If none of that makes any sense to you, you'd be better served saving up for a professionally built system that will do VR OOB.

 

[Lucius-Darcia]

I meant 500-1000 dollars

Hmmm with that budget i wpuld really recommand to stick on a console + a decent VR device.
Just the graphics card itself would eat most of that. Than the processor, board, ram and the ssd plus additionally good heatsink(s) would go far beyond that limit i fear. If you don't have already the VR device, this would cause additionally high costs. In the last years i have paid around 3500 € for my PC to make him VR capable with medium results. For getting a good VR performamce i would also need to upgrade a little bit more.

 

[Para Handy]

Hmmm with that budget i wpuld really recommand to stick on a console + a decent VR device.
..........

I thought Elite didn't support PSVR etc?

 

[Morbad]

i5 3.20ghz
16384mb ram
Direct x 11
Windows 7 64 bit
Nividia gforce gt 730
4095 mb memory
Hope that helps

New CPU and video card may well be all you require, though more detail would be needed.

Motherboard socket and model, as well as your power supply model, and the case you're using, at a minimum.

I looked at both a Core i5-3470 and a Core i5-650

Both look to be inadequate for VR

I suspect the system is using the 3470 as that's more contemporaneous with the GT 730.

An LGA-1155 i7 should be sufficient for VR.

Hmmm with that budget i wpuld really recommand to stick on a console + a decent VR device.
Just the graphics card itself would eat most of that. Than the processor, board, ram and the ssd plus additionally good heatsink(s) would go far beyond that limit i fear. If you don't have already the VR device, this would cause additionally high costs. In the last years i have paid around 3500 € for my PC to make him VR capable with medium results. For getting a good VR performamce i would also need to upgrade a little bit more.

Even if a new CPU, PSU, SSD, and GPU are needed, that could be squeezed into such a budget.