Virtual Reality? advice and info requested

[epthegeek]

I don't have it in a system builder thing, but here's all the junk I bought for the VR PC I put together:

CORSAIR CARBIDE AIR 540 ATX Cube Case (Separates the power supply and a lot of cabling from the main area for better air flow)
GIGABYTE Z370 AORUS Gaming 5 Motherboard
Intel Core i5-8600K CPU (if you aren't trying to hold the price down, a beefy i7 is a good idea, especially if you do VIVE+Wireless).
Corsair H110 closed loop water cooler for the CPU
EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti SC Black Gamging Video Card
G.SKILL 16GB (2x8GB) Ripjaws V Series DDR4 PC4-25600 RAM
EVGA SuperNOVA 650 G2 80+ Gold Power supply
WD Black 2TB HD (for large storage)
Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SSD (for OS/important crap -- though now I'd get an M2 drive)

Total build was just above 2k I think.

By now the GeForce RTX 20xx video cards are out. PC shit changes so fast it's hard to use someones old build as a guide.

One caveat - if you're thinking VIVE and want the wireless, stick with Intel, there's been a lot of problems with Ryzen CPUS with using the wireless. No clue why. But if you're not thinking VIVE+Wireless, then it's not as important.

[Hilton]

thanks!

That helps me start to play more in depth!

Eric > Heidi and I fore sure need to come check out your set up sometime soon! I need to see the vive before I make any decisions.

[Chris K]

The video card is the most important part for VR performance, and also the biggest price pivot point, so I think you'll want to spend some time considering your choice.

For VR PCs you'll generally want to stick with Nvidia video cards... they've been more attentive to VR and have had a better track record on frame latency, which is hugely important for VR (for nausea reasons). That's a holy war topic, so anyone feel free to disagree and I won't argue.

For Nvidia cards, there's systematization to the models. You could learn to decode the models, or I could just list them out in slowest-to-fastest. This might not be exact, but it's basically:

1060 GTX
970 GTX (discontinued)
1070 GTX
980 GTX (discontinued)
2060 RTX (not released yet)
1080 GTX
2070 RTX
2080 RTX

(Just FYI, anything starting with a 9xx is old, 10xx is recent, and 20xx is current.)

There's also "Ti" versions of some of these that are somewhat faster than the normal models. And there's ALSO laptop models of many of them that are lower on power consumption and performance, but if you're buying a PCI card you generally don't have to worry about those.

Unfortunately in the past couple years, crypto mining has destroyed the GPU market. Prices have gone absolutely insane, as miners that could make $100/mo on cypto are happy to buy whichever GPU has the most HP/watt. Cards that were $500-600 have added a couple hundred or more dollars, if you can even get your hands on them. Fortunately, the bottom has fallen out of the crypto market lately, so while the prices are still inflated you shouldn't have much availability trouble.

I'm not too current right now, but you might want to look into the 2060, because that's likely to be a good bang/buck card. If you just want performance and price is a secondary factor look at a 1080 or 2080. Don't get TOO freaky about getting the fastest card... I have a 970 GTX I bought two years ago, and it still runs pretty much everything at high detail settings. You're buying for the future, yes, but you don't want to sell Wrath of Olympus for the VR PC, I suspect.

After the video card, make sure you pick up a 500GB+ SSD for your boot volume and a 2-4TB HDD for storage, or just get a 1TB SSD if you want to spend a little more for speed. A HDD boot volume these days is like snow shoes on a sprinter.

I'm not current on CPUs these days, so I'll back away from recommendations there.

Armed with which parts you want, the remaining decision is to build it yourself or buy a pre-made system from someone like Alienware. The benefit to buying from integrators is that they tend to build nice case & heat sink packages, and that you don't need the (minimal) expertise required to build a system. You already know how to do that, so you'd basically be saving some time researching heat sinks, PSUs, and making sure your stuff fits in the case you choose. There's no wrong answer, especially if you plan to buy a system generationally, rather than incrementally as each piece "becomes slow".

On the other hand, building your own means you can choose your favored components across the board. Integrators tend to use motherboards and PSUs that aren't quite as nice as you might choose yourself, although things are WAY better than they were back before the gaming PC explosion when Dell tried to pass off 160W PSUs to all-comers.

For reference, I see an Alienware "Aurora" with a 8-core i7, Nvidia 2070 OC, water cooling, 16GB RAM, 256GB M2 SSD + 2TB HDD, and Win10 Home for $1980.

That's probably more than I intended to write, but I hope it helps!

[Hilton]

it helps but also adds questions (I am a noob).

I think for now I need to check out a few more setups and that way when I am really ready to build, I am buying the most up to date stuff and at that time.

[Chris K]

PC gaming is largely a budget question... pick what you want to spend, and you get a certain amount of speed for that cost. If you end up going the PC route, I'd treat it that way: pick what you're comfortable spending, and buy parts to hit your target.

No point getting too deep into it until you're ready to buy, cause prices are fluid, especially around Nvidia/AMD announcements.

[Hilton]

great advice and thanks!

I am having fun nerding out researching stuff and learning now anyway

Looking forward to the opportunity to check out more IRL also.

[Chris K]

Timely...

https://www.roadtovr.com/ces-2019-rift- ... riced-350/

[DeaconBlooze]

For those with PSVR - check out Ace Combat 7. It's set to release on 1/18. I've never played any of these games, but from what I hear they do a good job of bridging the gap from arcade to sim.

[Chris K]

People have said WarThunder is good for this too, although I tried that one and it wasn't so much a flight sim to me, as air combat maneuvering was bastardized by unrealistic energy management and a lack of realistic control authority.

Has anybody played a realistic flight sim for PC VR that doesn't require constant farting around with controls? At some point "realistic" changed from "flies real" to "has all the damn buttons and ground controller protocol of a real plane", and that stuff bores me to tears!

[1337atreyu]

If I were building a new PC from scratch without snooping around for second hand parts etc. It would probably be something like this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8600K 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($259.79 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-L9i 33.84 CFM CPU Cooler ($39.95 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock - Z370M-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard ($118.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($119.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung - 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($147.00 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB Mini Video Card ($334.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design - Define Nano S Mini ITX Desktop Case ($72.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Silverstone - 500 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply ($94.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1188.67
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-01-10 16:12 EST-0500

That being said, when looking at your PC, if you are willing to use the existing PC you have in your living room, the only necessary upgrade would be the video card. If you just spend the 334.99 on that GTX1070, you'd be all set. I specifically chose the mini version so it would fit in a MINI ITX case like you have.

Anywho, have fun!

[Hilton]

If I were building a new PC from scratch without snooping around for second hand parts etc. It would probably be something like this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8600K 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($259.79 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-L9i 33.84 CFM CPU Cooler ($39.95 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock - Z370M-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard ($118.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($119.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung - 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($147.00 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB Mini Video Card ($334.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design - Define Nano S Mini ITX Desktop Case ($72.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Silverstone - 500 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply ($94.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1188.67
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-01-10 16:12 EST-0500

That being said, when looking at your PC, if you are willing to use the existing PC you have in your living room, the only necessary upgrade would be the video card. If you just spend the 334.99 on that GTX1070, you'd be all set. I specifically chose the mini version so it would fit in a MINI ITX case like you have.

Anywho, have fun!

Thx

I think I decided that when I make the leap it is going to be a dedicated rig. I am enjoying the study phase of this so far and learning.
I need to try and take it slow before jumping in as I often go hard and then burn out quick on new hobbies.

[WindRaidor]

I’ve been working with VR for awhile now. I’ve owned all of the Oculus headsets (devKit 1, 2, the rift, and GO). I’ve used the Vive, the odyssey and the PlayStation VR. I’ve been lucky to do some developemt work for VR using Unity as well.
My humble opinion is to stick with the Oculus ecosystem. Hold off on buying until the Oculus Quest comes out, or later in the year for Rift 2.0 announcements (assuming 2019).

Here is my reasoning...Facebook is the only company that has a real vision on this space and a relatively clear path to get there. The other companies are just releasing hardware advancements but are positioning themselves to not necessarily be leaders in the category. Facebook also heavily invests in content and development communities which in turn will result in a better long term experience.

Something this community might be interested in is a project someone did called pinsim. Here is the link, https://www.tested.com/tech/gaming/5696 ... l-machine/

Create a VR pinball experience that feels real.

[Hilton]

Friend of a friend is trying to sell the following... thoughts?

Ryzen 1600 processor
16 Gb of RAM
Two (2x) GeForce 980 GTX video cards
250 Gb SSD
1 Tb HDD
750W Power Supply
Rosewill Stealth Case
Oculus Rift VR Headset (lightly used, with sensor and Oculus controller)
Oculus Rift Touch Controllers (unopened)


He wants 2k as-is, gently used.

[DeaconBlooze]

At first glance that doesn't seem to be much of a deal. I think you'd be able to build a comparable or better PC for around 1200, and the rift with touch and 2 sensors is now 350.

[Chris K]

Two 980s was a beast when that hardware was new. Now you’d be better served by a 1070 or 2080. Dual cards are very power hungry, and make a ton of heat (which turns into noise).

I agree, it’s not a killer deal, although it certainly is turnkey!