Xboxer to PC advice.

Hea7hen

Hea7hen
Hi folks, I have decided I need to get in on this VR thing so I am going to migrate from Xbox to PC. I have never been a PC gamer before so its a bit of a minefield deciding how (or where) to go about it. I think I am going to get a custom built PC from one of the UK retailers/builders. I have £3-4 grand to put into this and I have been putting in some homework with regards to graphics cards/gpu's/cpu's/motherboards etc and the kind of spec I require for VR.


My questions are... Which UK pc shops/custom builders would you recommend? or more importantly not recommend? and are there any pitfalls to look out for when buying a gaming/VR pc? Thanks in advance
 

CMDR Spangle

C
Ive always bought all my pc components from overclockers UK. Good range of bits to choose from and good prices. The forum is useful. 3-4 grand should get you a top of the range system.
 

Craith

Volunteer Moderator
Craith
welcome to the real world ;-)

can't help you with the pc, mine is woefully underpowered for VR ( GTX 970) but I still can't play without. it's like going back from fresh ground beans espresso to instant coffee.

one thing you should think about is if you want to stay with the Xbox controller or switch to a Hotas ( or mouse and keyboard).

a HOTAS increases the fun a lot for me, I have a x52 pro, but some people have troubles with it's durability.

should you need a donation to get you back on your feet, the Ceremonial Teabaggers Relief Fund would gladly donate a few hundred tons of Palladian, although it would probably be a lot of fun to start fresh in VR.
 

CMDR Heisenberg B. Damned

CMDR Heisenberg B. Damned
Overclockers are good as has been mentioned. If you're OK building it yourself you'll save a bit but if not they also do full systems. Remember you need to factor in the cost of the VR kit as well and I'd really recommend trialing VR. It can make some people very ill, you really don't want to splash out that kind of cash only to find out it's not for you.
 
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Kyennamo

K
Craith said:
welcome to the real world ;-)

should you need a donation to get you back on your feet, the Ceremonial Teabaggers Relief Fund would gladly donate a few hundred tons of Palladian, although it would probably be a lot of fun to start fresh in VR.
Click to expand...

On xbox i would donate 15-20 million to any friend that started fresh but only AFTER they earned their first million and got out of a sidewinder. I have a system that makes huge donations zero work for the receiver. Its literally instant :)

As for you Hea7hen.....i am in the exact same boat. I JUST started looking into all this earlier in the week. Going from console to pc can be very daunting. I opted for ordering a complete PC instead of building one myself

I had a friend who knows infinitely more about PC gaming than I do help me make the decision. I ended up ordering a CyberPowerPC Panzer from best buy. It has a 1080 gtx, i7 7700, 32 gb of ram and a solid state drive. It cost me 1900. I JUST ordered it 2 days ago and i wont have it for a few weeks so i cant tell you how well it functions but as stats go.....it should be fine.

Also, after some suggestions from forum users, and being able to try one in person, i chose the saitek x52 pro flight stick. I also ordered a new chair because i have a bad back and im tired of standing to play my games.

Im still trying to work out force feedback. Aparently, the lovely intricate controller vibrations i have come to love as an xb1 player arent even coded into the PC version.

So.... the option is to use audio transducers....which are expensive and vibrate based on sound going through your system and not actual actions in game. I have done a lot of reading on the subject over the the last few days and it seems the transducers work with limited success depending on the game. ED should work fine with them though. Noisy games.....not so much.

During all this......i neglected a monitor and sound system. Thankfully, i am doing all this for VR so my old crappy monitor will suffice and a pair of turtle beach 450 stealth should solve my sound needs. (though i do have a surround system.....i would just prefer not to move it. But i wont have a choice if i go with transducers)
 

starman

starman
The real benefit to PC games is the ability to mod them.. Are you able to change the hud colors on the xbox? Games have been sustained for years by mods and spawned completely new games

Also you may end up coding your own game!
 
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Hea7hen

Hea7hen
Thanks for the replies all, yeah I should of explained that the £3-4k will be for everything, PC, VR unit, keyboard, mouse, Hotas, gaming chair etc, so the cash will soon get eaten up I expect.
I have done loads of research the last week or so and watched lots of youtube vids on self-builds and it doesn't seem too hard at all, I imagined there would be loads of soldering and stuff lol, nevertheless I would rather go shop built for my first pc purely for the safety net of the 3 yr warranty. (and the nice tidy wiring)
I have not had chance to demo a VR unit yet, the only experience of VR for me is Samsung VR on my S7, I imagine Rift/Vive is similar but better. I did get the sickness thing from my Samsung so i'm aware of the adjustment period.
I have looked on Overclockers site and a couple of other stores too, I've used the build tools to make mock-up PC's but, soooo much choice in parts and spec, it makes my brain hurt just putting one together.


@Starman. @Craith. Yep will have to start again, I have about 900 hrs on Xbox and 1bil+ in creds and assets. I have heard that Frontier will migrate creds over to Pc account but not ranks.
@Kyennamo. I have read your post and you have asked lots of questions that I have been wondering too lol, so yes I guess were in similar boats but you are a little further along than me. The no force feedback thing will be weird to start with i'm sure. I will look forward to reading any further posts of yours to see how you're getting on with it all.
 

Kyennamo

K
I considered a custom build but not being fully versed on current pc hardware made even that task daunting.

Like.....i would start with the base model i wanted and just keep adding options. Every time it ended up in excess of 3500 for the PC so instead i just bought bought one that had the specs i wanted and left it at that.

As for force feedback, im considering combining a buttkicker with a kor fx. Hopefully, the combination will feel nice with elite in the chair and the kor fx would also still be useful doing room scale with the vive. But ultimately, i still havent decided

So far i am in for 3500. That includes the chair, the pc, the hotas, the vive, and a turtle beach headset. It doesnt include a monitor, force feedback option, sound system or games. I may use a sound system and a tiny monitor i already have but including games and vibration i figure 4200 is where im going to end up.

Are you going to transfer your account/money? I have about 5 bil on xbox, every engineer unlocked, admiral/king status, and a fully engineered (insert any/every ships name here). Along with my Elite status and access to "The Dez" i absolutely refuse to erase all of that just to transfer over munny so aparently, i will be starting over in a sidewinder with only a few bucks in my pocket. Unless of course soneone wants to donate a few million.......

Anyway.....best of luck. See you on the other side
 
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Beavis Tingleball

Beavis Tingleball
custom PC's are extremely easy to build once you know how to select components..the hardest part is making them look pretty. I would encourage you to get a parts list together, have someone check it to make sure that the parts you've chosen are 100% compatible, and put it together yourself. There are many places online you can find advice or instruction, not to mention this forum has plenty of folks that can easily walk you through any problem you may run into. By building your own PC you'll have the satisfaction of gaming on something you built, learned something useful, and you'll save a good bit of money in to process. It will give you your first peak into the realm of PC gaming life.
 

UniMag

U
Hea7hen said:
Hi folks, I have decided I need to get in on this VR thing so I am going to migrate from Xbox to PC. I have never been a PC gamer before so its a bit of a minefield deciding how (or where) to go about it. I think I am going to get a custom built PC from one of the UK retailers/builders. I have £3-4 grand to put into this and I have been putting in some homework with regards to graphics cards/gpu's/cpu's/motherboards etc and the kind of spec I require for VR.


My questions are... Which UK pc shops/custom builders would you recommend? or more importantly not recommend? and are there any pitfalls to look out for when buying a gaming/VR pc? Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

I also switched free m Xbox to pc a couple of years ago.

I inititally bought a very high spec laptop - custom built from scan.co.uk which I sold last year and moved over to a desktop also from scan. I believe I spent around on the desktop £2700 which inititally came with a 980ti GPU but since upgraded to a Titan XP so probably ended up spending around £3.5k

With both machines I did a lots of research on which builder to go with and scan seemed to offer the best and widest range of products for a custom build. I've been very happy with their service and the end product so can recommend them wholeheartedly.

Good look and enjoy the HUGE leap from Xbox!
 

starman

starman
Starman. @Craith. Yep will have to start again, I have about 900 hrs on Xbox and 1bil+ in creds and assets. I have heard that Frontier will migrate creds over to Pc account but not ranks.

so you will know encounter harmless NPC in a tooled up Anaconda. I guess if I come across one I wont be surprised. The xbox environ must be plain sailing. There was a undetected cash for credits that allowed many to build fast cred. Not sure what's happened on clearing that up
 

Hea7hen

Hea7hen
Thanks for the input guys, I think I have narrowed it down to using Scan or Overclockers, leaning towards Scan as I have seen a build that I like. One more question if I may, How many USB connections will I need in total to run Elite with Oculus Rift and all the other peripherals needed ie: HOTAS, keyboard etc?

As for migrating my Xbox account, I have decided against it. I am quite looking forward to revisiting all the ships from sidewinder onward just to see them and use them in VR, that seems much more appealing than jumping in where I left off on Xbox.
 

starman

starman
going from pc to xbox has that happened? I had a friend who imported the PCengine (remember that) from Japan to play one game!
 

TorTorden_VR

T
Hea7hen said:
Thanks for the input guys, I think I have narrowed it down to using Scan or Overclockers, leaning towards Scan as I have seen a build that I like. One more question if I may, How many USB connections will I need in total to run Elite with Oculus Rift and all the other peripherals needed ie: HOTAS, keyboard etc?

As for migrating my Xbox account, I have decided against it. I am quite looking forward to revisiting all the ships from sidewinder onward just to see them and use them in VR, that seems much more appealing than jumping in where I left off on Xbox.
Click to expand...

Depends on your other peripherals.

I myself have CH HOTAS, and pedals. Each use a seperate plug, but don't need a lot in bandwidth or power so have a hub for them all.
Then of course you got keyboard, mouse, audio devices, etc.
Seems my rift AND Vive mic is useless (sounds like poor drivers actually) so I use my regular headset with mic for sound than the built in HMD solutions.

Only device that honestly should run out on bandwidth is the Oculus rift camera since it is a high resolution, high framerate camera it needs everything a usb 3.0 ports can give, the hmd also want a 3.0 connection but seems to throw less errors.
For instance the camera throws errors when I plug it into my usb 3 expansion board but the headset doesn't.
It works fine on my main board so all is well.
As for the other devices, many keyboards etc has usb ports on them and I have no problem using them for various peripherals.

As for starting over the second time is quite a bit easier, I recently bought a second EDH account and after 14 hours of play I was in an A rated cobra with a similarly fit viper for res hunting.
 

TorTorden_VR

T
Hea7hen said:
Thanks TorTorden.

Sorry to be a PC noob but would this PC work well with Oculus & Elite as it is or would I have to buy anything else for it like external USB or any other stuff? Obvously I know I need monitor, keyboard, mouse, HOTAS etc

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/3xs...gb-asus-gtx-1080-strix-256gb-pcie-ssd-1tb-hdd
Click to expand...

Should do you very nicely indeed.
Almost jealous,, OK forget the almost part.

Most issues regarding usb ports and rift etc has was from older stuff and during dev kit days.
I myself am running on a build from 2014.
Originally put together with a 780, but it was defective so returned it, kept running on my then several ears old gpu, but upgraded it to a 960.

Then I found elite, and NEEDED a new screen, so that was switched for a 980ti.
It's doing quite well so far, but tempting to consider a new build soon....
 

Hea7hen

Hea7hen
TorTorden said:
Should do you very nicely indeed.
Almost jealous,, OK forget the almost part.

Most issues regarding usb ports and rift etc has was from older stuff and during dev kit days.
I myself am running on a build from 2014.
Originally put together with a 780, but it was defective so returned it, kept running on my then several ears old gpu, but upgraded it to a 960.

Then I found elite, and NEEDED a new screen, so that was switched for a 980ti.
It's doing quite well so far, but tempting to consider a new build soon....
Click to expand...

Cheers mate, its such a minefield when you are not really PC savvy, all I wan't to do is play Elite from inside the cockpit, it looks so awesome in VR. I was just worried i'd buy the wrong thing and my excitement would turn into devastation if it didn't work lol. Can't wait to experience this game in VR.
 
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