Interested in VR, But clueless on computers and what is needed
- Thread starter Dr Seuss
- Start date
I think it’s still cheaper to build your own, plus it’s got the benefit of having what you want in it
For a mid-range VR PC, this looks pretty decent for £769 for a pre-build:
...paired with a Rift S for £300, it’s not too far off a grand all-in.
If you need a monitor then that will obviously add to the cost, but I clagged mine into a telly because I wanted some console style couch-slouching
If I was building my own for a £1000 budget, I’d go for a 8th gen or higher i5 or i7 + mobo, 16GB DDR 4 RAM, GTX 1660ti, solid-state storage (probs around 480GB), 650w power supply, and all the rest (case, keyboard, mouse etc) as cheap as possible. My first VR build was an i54670k, 16GB DDR3 RAM, and GTX 1060 6GB - not too shabby for Elite but it did suffer from stutters with the graphics turned up - and even though it’d been many years since putting PC innards together, I didn’t find it too different. It’s still nervously dropping a chip into its socket hoping the pins don’t bend, followed by trying to figure out how to get the graphics card in without all the power cables being in the way
A lot depends on if you're going to put it together yourself or buy new. If you have stuff you're going to keep ( KB, monitor, etc ), or starting fresh and need it all. Did you want top of the line ? Mid-range ?
Then you come to budget.. Full Tilt Crazy ( no limit ), Moderate ( $1500-2000 ), or Cheap ( under $1000 )...
You can just buy the "box" ( no monitor/KB/Mouse ) with good internals for around $1500.. That's a good processor, current video card, 32 gig memory, and a M2 SSD. If you can scavenge the case/PS/CD/DVD off your old system it gets cheaper by a couple of hundred. Build it yourself and get a very nice system, but you won't save much. Quality will be higher ( IMO ) since you won't have to wonder what corners the builder/manufacturer cut to keep the cost down.
For a VR rig, I would suggest at a minimum :
1 - 6 core/12 thread processor and supporting MB. AMD or Intel.. AMD will get you PCIe-4.. but we don't have much that needs it right now. Reports I've read show it doesn't really add much even if your video card supports it. But you'd be future proofed. Your call.
2 - 32 gigs of memory, and the fastest the new motherboard supports. Period. Full stop. Do it once. And fill all the slots ! IE : If you have 4 slots, get 4 8-gig sticks and not 2 16-gig sticks. You get faster access if it's spread across the entire bank.
3 - Solid state drive, M2. The bigger the better, up to a terrabyte. The bigger drives are faster because they stripe the data across more chips. The sweet spot appears to be 1 terrabyte.
4 - Video Card : This is the killer. Video cards make/break VR. You want FAST, you want lots of memory, all the bells and whistles. But a top shelf one will hurt you for more then the cost of the rest of the PC. As an example, if you can find a 3090 it will cost over $1500. I would suggest going one or two steps down from the top-of-the-line. Like an Nvidia 3070/3060ti or AMD RX 6900 XT . Both good cards that will last, and under half what a 3090 will cost you. The bad part is that the video card market is in chaos right now and NVidia is releasing "super" and "TI" variants, and others just with more memory, at a rapid rate. I am sure AMD will follow suit, or just cut prices. Also, scalpers/crypto-miners bought up most available stock.. so good luck finding one. The only real advice is to get a good as you can afford out of what's available. Or wait a few more months for the dust to settle.
Then you come to budget.. Full Tilt Crazy ( no limit ), Moderate ( $1500-2000 ), or Cheap ( under $1000 )...
You can just buy the "box" ( no monitor/KB/Mouse ) with good internals for around $1500.. That's a good processor, current video card, 32 gig memory, and a M2 SSD. If you can scavenge the case/PS/CD/DVD off your old system it gets cheaper by a couple of hundred. Build it yourself and get a very nice system, but you won't save much. Quality will be higher ( IMO ) since you won't have to wonder what corners the builder/manufacturer cut to keep the cost down.
For a VR rig, I would suggest at a minimum :
1 - 6 core/12 thread processor and supporting MB. AMD or Intel.. AMD will get you PCIe-4.. but we don't have much that needs it right now. Reports I've read show it doesn't really add much even if your video card supports it. But you'd be future proofed. Your call.
2 - 32 gigs of memory, and the fastest the new motherboard supports. Period. Full stop. Do it once. And fill all the slots ! IE : If you have 4 slots, get 4 8-gig sticks and not 2 16-gig sticks. You get faster access if it's spread across the entire bank.
3 - Solid state drive, M2. The bigger the better, up to a terrabyte. The bigger drives are faster because they stripe the data across more chips. The sweet spot appears to be 1 terrabyte.
4 - Video Card : This is the killer. Video cards make/break VR. You want FAST, you want lots of memory, all the bells and whistles. But a top shelf one will hurt you for more then the cost of the rest of the PC. As an example, if you can find a 3090 it will cost over $1500. I would suggest going one or two steps down from the top-of-the-line. Like an Nvidia 3070/3060ti or AMD RX 6900 XT . Both good cards that will last, and under half what a 3090 will cost you. The bad part is that the video card market is in chaos right now and NVidia is releasing "super" and "TI" variants, and others just with more memory, at a rapid rate. I am sure AMD will follow suit, or just cut prices. Also, scalpers/crypto-miners bought up most available stock.. so good luck finding one. The only real advice is to get a good as you can afford out of what's available. Or wait a few more months for the dust to settle.
I would also advise going for a good CPU too. Elite relies on GPU more than other games, but I have found that other simulators like Il-2 Sturmovik are far more demanding on CPU. I have a GTX 1660 OC and runs Elite fine, but I only have an intel i7 4790, so in Il-2 big battles with many planes dropped my fps below 30, and big ones in multiplayer just got worse. I don't think that the 32 gigs of RAM are a must but they aren't that expensive anyway.
![[VR] DDM_Reaper20](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/44/44021.jpg?1588332101){kind=avatar}
RX6900XT customs cost about 1400 Euros over here. I should know, I snagged one
. The original version SUPPOSEDLY sells for 999 Euros, but getting that requires something close to prohibited magic (possibly including human sacrifice ). It is the best AMD has to offer, so...To be en par with the performance of a 3070, an RX6800 (without the XT) comes to mind. Price is still steep -- around 800 in Germany, depends on where you shop. No DLSS 2.0, of course, and much less RT power, but neither is used by ED anyway...
I'd still suggest waiting a bit. Lots of chaos in the GPU markets. Between COVID, Crypto-, and AMD/NVidia trying to out-do each other you could end up buying a good card now, and see the price fall drastically had you waited a few more weeks/months. But then that's always been the computer market.
I'll say that my 1070 worked fine for VR in Elite. So does my 2070 Super. A new machine would work fine with a used card until the prices settled. You don't have to buy top of the line.
I'll say that my 1070 worked fine for VR in Elite. So does my 2070 Super. A new machine would work fine with a used card until the prices settled. You don't have to buy top of the line.
Second hand 1080ti
Going to depend on a couple of things...
What VR HMD are you looking at? Not all are equal, and the higher end ones really need quite a beefy GPU to get the most out of them. I just got a Reverb G2, and my poor four year old (or so) PC with a GTX 1080, while it can play the games I play, it's struggling (it's minimum spec GPU for that HMD), so I'm upgrading the whole PC, as it's painful trying to buy a GPU at the moment - they are rarely available.
I'm going for a build with an Nvidia RTX 3080, not the best possible, but the next one up, the 3090 is silly money... And of course, buying the PC means that everything will work together, have enough power and so forth, and it means I'm also getting a much faster CPU, faster RAM, and in this case an SSD drive which will be faster than a SATA mechanical one.
Also depends somewhat on what games you might want to play. I play ED (have done for years, previously on a Rift CV1), and to be honest, even with my under-powered rig (for the Reverb with its higher resolution), it actually plays pretty well right now. But I've also started playing MSFS 2020, and that is a real struggle with graphics settings having to be dialed way down hence my upgrade, the new system should play MSFS pretty well, and since ED is continuing to support VR in the cockpit and SRV in Odyssey, I feel the upgrade is worth it.
So your choice will somewhat depend on the HMD you go with and the game(s) you want to play. If it's just Elite and an HMD with not the higher resolutions, you will likely be fine with maybe an RTX 3060ti or 3070, or even one of the 20x0 series although not much point in that as they are often more expensive than the newer 30x0 cards, either of which should give you a really good experience.
Second everything people say here, except these days, whatever you do, do not buy an Oculus headset. You can get better headsets which can still run Oculus and Steam games without the proprietary Oculus bloatware. Plus you have to be logged into Facebook to use it. Oculus were the leaders when they started the VR revolution but WMR/Valve/Pimax are all doing much better quality headsets ( although PiMax also have their own bloatware and, like Oculus, they won't let you use the headset without it ). WMR is part of Windows and doesn't need any special software except SteamVR for Steam games but then so do all the others and you use the Oculus plugin if you want to play Oculus games only, unlike Oculus, you 'only' need that bloatware for Oculus games. Not sure about Oculus but Valve uses base stations whereas my PiMax and HP Reverb ( WMR ) don't need them.
I'm still running happily on a 4790K plus 1080Ti for my Reverb G1 and I've seen nothing which has made me want to upgrade. My impression ( and this is purely my impression from the same reviews and analyses that everyone else here reads ) is that nVidia are a safer choice for GPU. I'm not brand precious personally, when I want to upgrade I couldn't care less about AMD, Intel, nV etc. I just buy whatever ticks my boxes at the time and it seems that nV are putting much more effort into VR support and features than AMD currently.
Amongst my home buddies, most of them are bailing from AMD GPUs because of their 'cr@p' drivers - which has been my own experience for my AMD GPUs since the Radeon X800XT AGP. They're just awful drivers. With nV drivers, I'll run the same driver for a year or more without issue. Yet I still have no problems with ED, Skyrim, XR, NMS etc. I don't get 90fps framerates obviously but then I don't care either. I've configured a nice balance of smooth and good eye candy and I'm enjoying my VR.
I'm still running happily on a 4790K plus 1080Ti for my Reverb G1 and I've seen nothing which has made me want to upgrade. My impression ( and this is purely my impression from the same reviews and analyses that everyone else here reads ) is that nVidia are a safer choice for GPU. I'm not brand precious personally, when I want to upgrade I couldn't care less about AMD, Intel, nV etc. I just buy whatever ticks my boxes at the time and it seems that nV are putting much more effort into VR support and features than AMD currently.
Amongst my home buddies, most of them are bailing from AMD GPUs because of their 'cr@p' drivers - which has been my own experience for my AMD GPUs since the Radeon X800XT AGP. They're just awful drivers. With nV drivers, I'll run the same driver for a year or more without issue. Yet I still have no problems with ED, Skyrim, XR, NMS etc. I don't get 90fps framerates obviously but then I don't care either. I've configured a nice balance of smooth and good eye candy and I'm enjoying my VR.
Oculus Quest 2, Ryzen, Nvidia. Loving it here, no issues. Used a fake facebook account.
Just curious, having not used the Quest 2; given that Win 10 comes with full VR support and you don't need any of the Oculus/facebook bits and bobs, what was the attraction of buying Oculus and basically paying again for the same VR support? Now you've got two licenses and, AFAIK, the Oculus one doesn't bring you anything you couldn't already do with the native software and relevant 'free' plugins. Or am I missing something obvious? ( Quite possible ).
It goes wireless on it's own with a set of games, but I play it almost entirely over PC. Apparently there are some preliminary ways to go wireless on PC games as well with a 5 ghz router that I've yet to try. I don't know the Reverb G1 but this is my first headset and it would be interesting to see the difference. Looks like Reverb you pay a little more for better resolution, vs save and be a slave to Facebook (I don't like that either btw)? These things are all becoming so amazing so quickly that we're pretty close to any recent headset will do.