Building a VR Ready PC for Under $1100

When it comes to building a high-end gaming PC, many people tend to focus on the graphics card and CPU, but there are other components that can make a big impact on performance. In this article, we'll be exploring how to build a VR-ready PC for under $1100, using some of the best components available in the market.

Choosing the Right Case

The first step in building any PC is choosing the right case. For this build, we've chosen the Silent Base 600 from Be Quiet, which is an ATX case that offers excellent cable management and soundproofing capabilities. The case itself costs around $140, but for an ATX build, it's a great value. It has a solid layout and features special sound-absorbing material on the inside, which will help keep our PC quiet and at low temperatures.

Building the Rest of the PC

Once we have our case, we need to choose the rest of the components. For this build, we've chosen an Intel Core i5-6600K CPU, which offers excellent performance for gaming and content creation. We've also chosen a 32GB DDR4 RAM kit, which will provide plenty of memory for our games and applications. The motherboard is the ASRock Z170 EXTREME3, which supports all the latest features and has a great layout.

Power Supply

The power supply is another important component that we need to consider when building a PC. For this build, we've chosen an EVGA 650 GS, which offers plenty of power and efficiency. This power supply will ensure that our PC can handle all the components we're using, even at high loads.

Graphics Card

The graphics card is arguably the most important component for any gaming PC, and for VR gaming in particular. For this build, we've chosen a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980, which offers excellent performance and features. This graphics card will provide plenty of power for our games and applications, and will ensure that our PC can handle all the latest VR titles.

VR Compatibility

Before we start building, it's worth noting that VR compatibility is crucial when choosing components. For this build, we've chosen a motherboard that supports VR, and we've also chosen a graphics card that meets the minimum requirements for VR. We'll also be using a SteamVR-compatible power supply to ensure that our PC can handle all the demands of VR.

Testing the Build

Once we have all our components assembled, it's time to test the build. For this purpose, we've downloaded the SteamVR performance test, which will help us determine if our PC is VR-ready. The test runs a sequence from the popular game Portal, and we can see how well our PC performs. To our surprise, our PC scores an almost-perfect 90 frames per second, making it more than ready for VR gaming.

Conclusion

In this article, we've explored how to build a VR-ready PC for under $1100 using some of the best components available in the market. From choosing the right case to selecting the perfect power supply and graphics card, every component played a crucial role in ensuring that our PC performed well. With our build, we're able to run all our favorite VR games at high frame rates, making it an ideal setup for anyone looking to get into VR gaming.

Resources

If you're interested in building your own PC, here are the components used in this build:

* Silent Base 600 from Be Quiet

* Intel Core i5-6600K CPU

* 32GB DDR4 RAM kit

* ASRock Z170 EXTREME3 motherboard

* EVGA 650 GS power supply

* NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 graphics card

For more information on VR gaming and PC building, be sure to check out our articles and resources section.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys I'm random Frank p and today we're gonna be building a VR ready PC now with the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift set to release in just a few short weeks you're admittedly going to need a pretty powerful PC to get it up and running with no problems now when you go to pre-order the Oculus on their website they have a minimum spec sheet there so you can see the minimum Hardware that you're going to need and able to fully power and run the Oculus Rift so what we have here today is going to be a little bit more than that we're not going minimum here because we want to build the best build possible for your money so the big thing here is gonna be the price for the performance now also I wanted to keep in mind something that's going to make this possibly future proof for the next two to three years before you're going to be actually forced to upgrade with all the new hardware coming out so we have a little bit more than the minimum here that's going to be good in the long run because you're not gonna be spending too much more money than what the minimum is we're going to require and we're going to be getting a lot more power out of this PC now this isn't going to be a build guide I'm not going to teach you how to build this PC but more so an in-depth review of each individual piece of Hardware that I have here and why we're going to pick it for this VR ready build and again just keep in mind price for performance here but I'll go over that with each thing we talk about now the first piece of Hardware we're going to talk about is the CPU arguably the most important parts and the minimum CPU they require is an i5 45 90. but I went with the I5 6600k and I'll tell you why I recommend this over the 4590. first off it is 24 faster on a single core and when you factor in single core quad core and multi-core speeds you can get up to 40 faster on the 6600k versus the 4590k the 6600k is also a Skylake chipset versus the Haswell for the 4590 and I picked this also because in the future obviously Skylink is going to be the norm you're going to see a lot more compatible motherboards with that and they're going to be cheaper price as more CPUs come out so I figured why not future proof yourself and go with a Skylake chip over a you know kind of phasing itself out Haswell chip for the future then when you factor in the price this is one of the biggest things here the 6600k comes in around 250 dollars however when you buy it from where I bought it from which is Micro Center you get 50 off and when you pair it with a compatible motherboard you get an additional twenty dollars off so for the 6600k that retails at around 250 I got it for only two hundred dollars versus the 150.45.90 and when you're pairing again the price for the performance the 6600k is a no-brainer and it's definitely a great upgrade over the 4590 and you also might be asking why not use something like the i7 4790k that is stronger and is also compatible with you know the Haswell chips at motherboards and DDR3 RAM well again when you factor in you're the price for the performance the 6600k is a better option and you're merely not getting that much more performance out of the 4790k uh factoring in the hundred dollars different so I just think again minimum keeping the cost down here the best build for the least money 6600k is your best option next up is the motherboard and this admittedly is not going to factor too much into your performance obviously I went with the gigabyte h170m d3h board um again it is ddr4 compatible compatible with my Skylake chipset it's going to have your basic motherboard features and stuff like that but what's also cool is that it is m.2 compatible m.2 is going to give you a much faster storage option uh versus like say the three and it also has SATA Express which is around 10 gigabytes per second faster than just say the three this was around 90 to 100 but again since I paired it with a compatible CPU from Micro Center I got this for only seventy dollars so we have the CPU we have the motherboard what about keeping that cool next we're going to go with the CPU Cooler which is the dark Rock 3 from be quiet you could also say why not something like the very cheap and affordable and very popular Evo 212 from Cooler Master this thing is a monster and for the price you're getting this thing at it is going to keep your PC extremely cool when it is you know running all those VR programs and you're not gonna have any problems with this thing it is absolutely solid it is massive so the heatsinks on here are considerably going to be much more efficient versus a smaller and cheaper CPU Cooler and for the money only 90 which is going to be around you know like 40 dollars more than the 212 Evo I would go with this better cost for the performance next up is going to be the graphics card and the Oculus website recommends at least a GTX 970 or an AMD equivalent at an R9 to 90. again that's what they recommend for the minimum compatibility we're gonna go with a 980. for a few reasons first up 980s have draft in price a ton over the past year or so since the 980 TI came out and the 980 is going to beat the 970 in pretty much every aspect that matters at a considerable margin and another big reason I'm recommending the 980 is because of the price we saw what happened last year in the 980 TI came out these dropped and in just a month or so they're going to be releasing a new line of the Paschal gpus which means another price drop for the 980 so you could pick it up at a greatly discounted price even on some flash sales or anything like that for me I got this at only 400 for this G1 980 graphics card from gigabyte I got it brand new on Amazon so always use your resources check Amazon even check eBay check Newegg for new stuff I got this it was it was an open box but it was a brand new card huge discount so definitely check around for the best prices possible like I said a great GPU to be coming down in price again very shortly and I got this for four hundred dollars if you want to argue a 980 TI AI over this well again you're gonna be sending 200 extra dollars just to get that yes you're getting two more gigabytes of video Ram uh but I think it's gonna be better off for 200 less and plus with the 980 you are actually getting a higher clock speed and a higher turbo clock speed as well as a lower power consumption so this is definitely gonna be your best option for this next up is Rand nothing too flashy here they recommend eight I'm going with 16. I have two eight gigabyte sticks of ddr4 ran from hyperx this is gonna come in only like 75 dollars not a bad deal for that for memory this is going to vary from each individual person I'm using a 480 gigabyte card from hyperx again this is a little SSD uh but obviously you can get whatever sort of storage you want this is going to come in at a higher price but you can get a one terabyte Seagate hard drive for only fifty dollars so when it comes to this kind of stuff towards the end of the build this is where you can start to factor in and play with the extra money you have left over for all the price you can definitely get anything on a cheaper end to a higher end like this SSD for around 200 or a 50 one terabyte hard drive next up is power supply I'm going with the 750 watts P2 Nova from EVGA I went with that because it is fully modular no you're not going to even touch anywhere close to 750 watts so you could easily get away with a 650 and save some money but it was only 75 dollars and then lastly is the case and again just like your power supply and your choice of storage uh this is where you can kind of you know use the extra money you have left over or spend more if you want a higher end build uh but I'm going with the silent base 600 from be quiet as well this uh this case itself is only going to be around a hundred and forty dollars but for an ATX build you could easily spend anywhere from 50 to 150 on a Case um I went with this because it's a nice solid case got uh you know which is a great layout and these are special sound absorption material on the inside so it's going to keep my PCS everything I have here nice and quiet as well as at low temps so for eleven hundred dollars again give or take around a hundred depending on the sales and stuff like that any discounts you can take advantage of I highly recommend to use your resources to save the most money possible but for the cost this is going to be hands down the best build possible to be VR ready now if you have any extra money left over if you really don't have a budget I would recommend if anything upgrading your graphics card from a 90 to a 980 TI but like I said I'm going with the 980 because it's going to give you the best performance for the price that we're spending so now I'm going to get it all built up and we're going to see the final results we're going to download Steam and it's going to clarify that we are in fact VR ready to get riding with the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift all right so we got this VR PC built up with no problems at all but I went ahead and downloaded steam obviously man I downloaded the steam VR performance test you can check how well your PC is and how well it's gonna be compatible with these VR devices coming out so we're going to run it and see how good this thing can handle it all right so this is the VR performance test it runs it in this little emulated window that's kind of playing this sequence from a portal here as you can see it has the two like little goggle things that's gonna be on your screen for when you're playing or using your Oculus Rifts or your HTC Vive but this is a test and just like that we are done and look at that it is telling us we are more than ready uh obviously red is going to mean not ready at all yellow is capable which is what you're gonna see if you do own a um like a 9 a 970 or an R9 290 but since we went ahead and got the 980 we are almost at the peak right here so we are going to be more than fine uh right here I'll probably throw like I'll throw a little overlay on the screen but you can see we can go to show details and it'll tell us more information about our our little test results here and down below the main thing that is most important is your frames below 90 FPS since all uh VR games are going to run at 90. you're gonna want that to be at zero and guess what we did zero frames under 90. that is awesome so everything ran just fine here we got more than uh more than pleasurable results and again this is all from our build with a GTX 980 and the I5 6600k CPU all right guys you saw the results we are more than ready to be up and running with VR zero frames under 90 FPS and we are pretty much all the way to the top of the bar which means this PC can handle any VR with zero problems now as I've given waited numerous times throughout this video yes you can probably get cheaper parts and still be okay and yes you can get better components but you're still gonna be spending money this guy this PC build right here is going to be the best build guide for you by the best components for the most affordable amount here so yes you can buy better graphics card just so you can get a higher CPU but all the parts that we have in this video is going to be the best price for the performance we're getting yes we could have gotten a cheaper a graphics card we would we would not be anywhere where we are now it needs to be our results so I hope this video helped you out and for around one thousand dollars you can be up and running with no problems at all and run all your VR games on the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive with zero problems and also don't forget check the description down below or I have all the parts listed in case you want to check it out and also don't forget take advantage of your resources look for sales been look out for any special deals all that good stuff if you like this video and it helps you out please give it a thumbs up to show your support you can follow me on Twitter at randomfrankp and lastly guys don't forget to hit that subscribe button on random Frank P hope you enjoyed have a good daywhat's up guys I'm random Frank p and today we're gonna be building a VR ready PC now with the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift set to release in just a few short weeks you're admittedly going to need a pretty powerful PC to get it up and running with no problems now when you go to pre-order the Oculus on their website they have a minimum spec sheet there so you can see the minimum Hardware that you're going to need and able to fully power and run the Oculus Rift so what we have here today is going to be a little bit more than that we're not going minimum here because we want to build the best build possible for your money so the big thing here is gonna be the price for the performance now also I wanted to keep in mind something that's going to make this possibly future proof for the next two to three years before you're going to be actually forced to upgrade with all the new hardware coming out so we have a little bit more than the minimum here that's going to be good in the long run because you're not gonna be spending too much more money than what the minimum is we're going to require and we're going to be getting a lot more power out of this PC now this isn't going to be a build guide I'm not going to teach you how to build this PC but more so an in-depth review of each individual piece of Hardware that I have here and why we're going to pick it for this VR ready build and again just keep in mind price for performance here but I'll go over that with each thing we talk about now the first piece of Hardware we're going to talk about is the CPU arguably the most important parts and the minimum CPU they require is an i5 45 90. but I went with the I5 6600k and I'll tell you why I recommend this over the 4590. first off it is 24 faster on a single core and when you factor in single core quad core and multi-core speeds you can get up to 40 faster on the 6600k versus the 4590k the 6600k is also a Skylake chipset versus the Haswell for the 4590 and I picked this also because in the future obviously Skylink is going to be the norm you're going to see a lot more compatible motherboards with that and they're going to be cheaper price as more CPUs come out so I figured why not future proof yourself and go with a Skylake chip over a you know kind of phasing itself out Haswell chip for the future then when you factor in the price this is one of the biggest things here the 6600k comes in around 250 dollars however when you buy it from where I bought it from which is Micro Center you get 50 off and when you pair it with a compatible motherboard you get an additional twenty dollars off so for the 6600k that retails at around 250 I got it for only two hundred dollars versus the 150.45.90 and when you're pairing again the price for the performance the 6600k is a no-brainer and it's definitely a great upgrade over the 4590 and you also might be asking why not use something like the i7 4790k that is stronger and is also compatible with you know the Haswell chips at motherboards and DDR3 RAM well again when you factor in you're the price for the performance the 6600k is a better option and you're merely not getting that much more performance out of the 4790k uh factoring in the hundred dollars different so I just think again minimum keeping the cost down here the best build for the least money 6600k is your best option next up is the motherboard and this admittedly is not going to factor too much into your performance obviously I went with the gigabyte h170m d3h board um again it is ddr4 compatible compatible with my Skylake chipset it's going to have your basic motherboard features and stuff like that but what's also cool is that it is m.2 compatible m.2 is going to give you a much faster storage option uh versus like say the three and it also has SATA Express which is around 10 gigabytes per second faster than just say the three this was around 90 to 100 but again since I paired it with a compatible CPU from Micro Center I got this for only seventy dollars so we have the CPU we have the motherboard what about keeping that cool next we're going to go with the CPU Cooler which is the dark Rock 3 from be quiet you could also say why not something like the very cheap and affordable and very popular Evo 212 from Cooler Master this thing is a monster and for the price you're getting this thing at it is going to keep your PC extremely cool when it is you know running all those VR programs and you're not gonna have any problems with this thing it is absolutely solid it is massive so the heatsinks on here are considerably going to be much more efficient versus a smaller and cheaper CPU Cooler and for the money only 90 which is going to be around you know like 40 dollars more than the 212 Evo I would go with this better cost for the performance next up is going to be the graphics card and the Oculus website recommends at least a GTX 970 or an AMD equivalent at an R9 to 90. again that's what they recommend for the minimum compatibility we're gonna go with a 980. for a few reasons first up 980s have draft in price a ton over the past year or so since the 980 TI came out and the 980 is going to beat the 970 in pretty much every aspect that matters at a considerable margin and another big reason I'm recommending the 980 is because of the price we saw what happened last year in the 980 TI came out these dropped and in just a month or so they're going to be releasing a new line of the Paschal gpus which means another price drop for the 980 so you could pick it up at a greatly discounted price even on some flash sales or anything like that for me I got this at only 400 for this G1 980 graphics card from gigabyte I got it brand new on Amazon so always use your resources check Amazon even check eBay check Newegg for new stuff I got this it was it was an open box but it was a brand new card huge discount so definitely check around for the best prices possible like I said a great GPU to be coming down in price again very shortly and I got this for four hundred dollars if you want to argue a 980 TI AI over this well again you're gonna be sending 200 extra dollars just to get that yes you're getting two more gigabytes of video Ram uh but I think it's gonna be better off for 200 less and plus with the 980 you are actually getting a higher clock speed and a higher turbo clock speed as well as a lower power consumption so this is definitely gonna be your best option for this next up is Rand nothing too flashy here they recommend eight I'm going with 16. I have two eight gigabyte sticks of ddr4 ran from hyperx this is gonna come in only like 75 dollars not a bad deal for that for memory this is going to vary from each individual person I'm using a 480 gigabyte card from hyperx again this is a little SSD uh but obviously you can get whatever sort of storage you want this is going to come in at a higher price but you can get a one terabyte Seagate hard drive for only fifty dollars so when it comes to this kind of stuff towards the end of the build this is where you can start to factor in and play with the extra money you have left over for all the price you can definitely get anything on a cheaper end to a higher end like this SSD for around 200 or a 50 one terabyte hard drive next up is power supply I'm going with the 750 watts P2 Nova from EVGA I went with that because it is fully modular no you're not going to even touch anywhere close to 750 watts so you could easily get away with a 650 and save some money but it was only 75 dollars and then lastly is the case and again just like your power supply and your choice of storage uh this is where you can kind of you know use the extra money you have left over or spend more if you want a higher end build uh but I'm going with the silent base 600 from be quiet as well this uh this case itself is only going to be around a hundred and forty dollars but for an ATX build you could easily spend anywhere from 50 to 150 on a Case um I went with this because it's a nice solid case got uh you know which is a great layout and these are special sound absorption material on the inside so it's going to keep my PCS everything I have here nice and quiet as well as at low temps so for eleven hundred dollars again give or take around a hundred depending on the sales and stuff like that any discounts you can take advantage of I highly recommend to use your resources to save the most money possible but for the cost this is going to be hands down the best build possible to be VR ready now if you have any extra money left over if you really don't have a budget I would recommend if anything upgrading your graphics card from a 90 to a 980 TI but like I said I'm going with the 980 because it's going to give you the best performance for the price that we're spending so now I'm going to get it all built up and we're going to see the final results we're going to download Steam and it's going to clarify that we are in fact VR ready to get riding with the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift all right so we got this VR PC built up with no problems at all but I went ahead and downloaded steam obviously man I downloaded the steam VR performance test you can check how well your PC is and how well it's gonna be compatible with these VR devices coming out so we're going to run it and see how good this thing can handle it all right so this is the VR performance test it runs it in this little emulated window that's kind of playing this sequence from a portal here as you can see it has the two like little goggle things that's gonna be on your screen for when you're playing or using your Oculus Rifts or your HTC Vive but this is a test and just like that we are done and look at that it is telling us we are more than ready uh obviously red is going to mean not ready at all yellow is capable which is what you're gonna see if you do own a um like a 9 a 970 or an R9 290 but since we went ahead and got the 980 we are almost at the peak right here so we are going to be more than fine uh right here I'll probably throw like I'll throw a little overlay on the screen but you can see we can go to show details and it'll tell us more information about our our little test results here and down below the main thing that is most important is your frames below 90 FPS since all uh VR games are going to run at 90. you're gonna want that to be at zero and guess what we did zero frames under 90. that is awesome so everything ran just fine here we got more than uh more than pleasurable results and again this is all from our build with a GTX 980 and the I5 6600k CPU all right guys you saw the results we are more than ready to be up and running with VR zero frames under 90 FPS and we are pretty much all the way to the top of the bar which means this PC can handle any VR with zero problems now as I've given waited numerous times throughout this video yes you can probably get cheaper parts and still be okay and yes you can get better components but you're still gonna be spending money this guy this PC build right here is going to be the best build guide for you by the best components for the most affordable amount here so yes you can buy better graphics card just so you can get a higher CPU but all the parts that we have in this video is going to be the best price for the performance we're getting yes we could have gotten a cheaper a graphics card we would we would not be anywhere where we are now it needs to be our results so I hope this video helped you out and for around one thousand dollars you can be up and running with no problems at all and run all your VR games on the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive with zero problems and also don't forget check the description down below or I have all the parts listed in case you want to check it out and also don't forget take advantage of your resources look for sales been look out for any special deals all that good stuff if you like this video and it helps you out please give it a thumbs up to show your support you can follow me on Twitter at randomfrankp and lastly guys don't forget to hit that subscribe button on random Frank P hope you enjoyed have a good day\n"