The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are here. But your PC has to be pretty powerful to use these cutting-edge VR headsets. If your PC is lacking performance, don’t worry. We’re going to show you how to build a VR-ready PC.
Update, July 1 2016: We’ve added information about the new AMD Radeon RX 480 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 and 1070 graphics cards, which change the VR landscape in a big way. We’ve also rechecked all our prices.
Getting started
Building a PC is simpler than you might think. You simply:
– Pick out the right components
– Plug them into the correct slots
– Install your operating system
We’re not going to rehash that entire process here, because CNET’s Dan Graziano wrote a comprehensive three-part guide that covers all the PC-building bases.
But when it comes to building a VR-ready PC, not any old component will do. We’ve spent hours piecing together parts, quizzing hardware manufacturers and speaking to VR developers to figure out the best parts for you — both today and into the future.
Then, we sat down to build a VR gaming rig. (We got a little help from PC component vendor Newegg, which provided the CPU, GPUs, motherboard, memory and liquid cooling system for our computer after we finished our research.) Don’t want to build a VR-ready PC? Here’s my colleague Dan Ackerman’s guide to buying one instead. Read More…