I want to purchase a VR gaming desktop off the shelf as I don't have the time to build one at the moment. At a minimum it needs to be able to play Half Life Alyx on an Oculus Quest. My budget is $1500-$2000 but I'll go higher if there isn't anything good at that price. Can be either AMD or Intel. I've been console gaming for the last 20 years so I don't know where to start with a PC gaming machine. I'd appreciate links to suitable machines from reputable sellers that I can just purchase online and have it delivered or pick up from Sydney. No need for a monitor/keyboard/mouse either. Looking forward to seeing what you guys recommend!
Prebuilt VR Gaming Desktop Recommendations Please
Udemy-Guy33 on 26/06/2020 - 11:04
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I don't have a favourite computer shop. Can I get a link to some of yours?
Thanks, i'll check it out
Hey mate I just went through this process and started playing Alyx yesterday. You can definitely get in under $2000. Here’s my partpicker list. https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/yFXqf9 This build was approx $2500 however that’s due to the case, custom cables, cooler and NVME storage.
CPU, PSU, MOBO, GPU, RAM and Case would have been approx $1,750. Add $100 for an SSD and you’re set.
I'm still a bit of a noobie, what's the advantage of the NVME storage? $400ea seems hefty.
Don't mind the partpicker prices. I picked them up for much less. NVME is fast storage. Not necessary for your build. https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/544817
NVME is very fast compared to SATA3, good NVME drives benchmark north of 3000MB/s (My Samsung 970EVO comes in at 3500/2500 for sequential read), SATA3 drives will never be faster than 600MB/s.
Worth noting that you will notice almost no difference between SATA3 and NVME for gaming at the moment.
@eecan: Depends on your definition of difference, performance increase (FPS), no, load times however should be considerably quicker.
@bircoe: I wouldn't consider the differences considerable myself, here are a few examples.
https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/7pd8op/i_benchmarked…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIXSSOzyLbs&feature=youtu.be
@eecan: True i just got my brother a 500gb samsung 970 evo which he can use as a primary drive as its a bit snappier than sata drives and when he wants more storage later just add a larger sata drive for games and video storage.
Also samsung evos have cashback promo at the moment which brings the cost down to roughly $160 for 500gb or $300 for 1tb.
So how would I go about getting that built for me? Do I give the link to a computer store and ask them to quote building and shipping it to me? Or is pcpartpicker.com just a site for those that want to do the builds themselves?
Yes you can provide a list to a shop and request a quote.
If you buy prebuilt the advantage is the warranty for the bundle from the people selling it. The disadvantage is they usually cut cost by giving you a generic bottom shelf power supply, motherboard and sometimes ram and storage.
If you pick the parts and have a shop build it the advantage again is they will likely warranty the whole system but the disadvantage is you'll be paying their prices for all the parts which may not be the best prices at the time.
If you pick the parts yourself the advantage is you can cherry pick the best quality components at the best prices from various sellers for your build and the disadvantage is you will have to deal with the retailer / manufacturer of the individual part if any issues arise.
Putting a pc together from parts is only a 60-90 minute affair with another 30 minutes for software setup. If you're not confident doing it or don't have the time to there are a number of people on gumtree / marketplace that do this as a hobby and will happily do it for a relatively small sum $50-$100 (I've even seen people offer to do it for free as long as they can film it for their youtube channel).
Thanks for taking the time to explain that, you’ve given me some things to consider that I hadn’t thought about before. Thanks!
Lol only 60-90mins. That's if all the parts are out of the box and you don't care about how it looks. Realistically it's a few hours. Putting it together is the easy part. It's making it all neat and tidy that takes the longest.
@nomoneynoproblems: Agree wholeheartedly but spending hours on cable management is entirely optional. Getting a pc to post can be achieved in less than 30 minutes for an experienced builder and less than 60 minutes for an inexperienced builder. While building pcs looks daunting it's not really much harder than putting together lego.
@turkz1: That's true but I meant the whole package of assembly, setup and installation looking nice, not just cable management. You've got endless boxes, bits of plastic and just general waste you need to decide on throwing out or keeping, putting crap away, making your workstation neat so it doesn't look like a dog's breakfast, etc. Maybe I'm anal about it, but when I build my rig and I make sure I'm doing it once and never going back into the case unless I'm upgrading and the same can be said when I set it all up. I like to tidy the cables and keep everything dust free. Putting it together is the best part, it's just the all around tidy up that's the biggest pain that no one ever talks about.
Hey mate, check out this deal from TechFast (the GTX 2080 one). A tiny bit over budget, and you'd need to add a ~3TB Harddrive probably but still really good value.
Should I get the Ryzen 7 or will the Ryzen 5 be plenty for VR gaming?
Ryzen 5 3600 is great value and plenty for gaming IMO. Games are GPU intensive not CPU intensive.
Just order a custom build at your favourite computer shop, they even have custom build suggestions.
I would just get an AMD CPU, Nvidia GPU and 16GB of ram.