VR Gaming: Building Your Own Oculus Rig

Final Thoughts

Building an Oculus Rift equipped rig can be tricky, as you’re effectively just trying to build a normal high-end gaming rig, with a requirement for stronger graphics performance than you would with a standard 1080p monitor. Pushing your games to a 3D display like the Oculus Rift can be demanding, as things have to be rendered twice and with Oculus planning a 2K resolution display for their consumer model, things are going to get even more demanding. When they do, you can bet I will revising my hardware to see how much performance is needed to enjoy it.

While I admit you can go out and buy X99 motherboards, Haswell-E processors, GTX 980 graphics cards and more, doing so requires a much bigger financial investment than the system I’ve put together today. If you can afford to do that, go nuts, but for your average high-end PC, this system I’ve built for myself is a lot more realistic and it’s what I’ve been using for all my eTeknix Oculus Rift testing, and it’s held up exceptionally well.

• Intel Core i5 3570K Processor – £160
• Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD – £60
• Kingston HyperX Predator 2400Mhz DDR3 8GB Kit – £70
• Seasonic 100W PSU – £160
• 2 x Sapphire R9 280X Tri-X Vapor-X 3GB – £220 (each)
• Gigabyte Gaming Motherboard – £110

Cost: £1000

Keep in mind you still need a cooler, chassis and perhaps some other components such as extra storage, but as a starting point, the above hardware is enough to get you started. You could of course get away with one graphics card for a while, but if you’re really wanting a solid 3D gaming rig, you’re looking at a thousand pound investment; this is before you’ve spend a few hundred more on an Oculus Rift and any cooler peripherals to maximise your VR experience.

Want to know more about Oculus Rift? Check out our full review of the DK2, our Oculus Rift Configuration Guide and our Best Oculus Rift experiences article.