VIRTUALLY PERFECT
THIS PC MAXED OUT the “very high” quality meter on Valve’s SteamVR Performance Test tool. Testing it with a regular Oculus Rift headset proved successful, as did playing conventional games. It’s a big, powerful, flashy machine, well suited for VR gaming if money isn’t a concern.
Sometimes it is, though, so there are a few things we might change if we started again from scratch. The XPG Battlecruiser is a pricey case, and has a lot of features we didn’t use. We also might consider a smaller, cheaper HDD, as 6TB is a whopping amount, even for the dedicated gamer. If you think you can get by with the 1TB SSD, you might not even need to splash out on a hard drive. That SSD is a worthy inclusion, though, as the MP600 offers practically unparalleled transfer speeds for the fastest load times.
The Zotac RTX 2070 Super performed excellently. VR headsets tend to use esoteric resolutions, but the 2070 Super handled them fine. Latency was all but non-existent, and although benchmarking is difficult in VR, we were able to test a few games.
SUPERHOTVR,BeatSaber, and Space PirateTrainer looked awesome, reminding us that PC-tethered VR is still superior to standalone units like the Oculus Quest.
The Ryzen 7 3800X performed admirably, but we suspect that a 3700X would have had the same effect. This rig isn’t designed for CPU-heavy tasks, and while VR is a bit more demanding on the CPU than regular gaming, there’s not too much need for a particularly high-end part. The 3700X is $80 cheaper than the 3800X, and the difference in VR performance likely wouldn’t be noticeable.
There’s not much else we’d want to change for this build. It served its purpose well, but this could have been a cheaper system. We stand by our choice of memory; the Sniper X RAM from G.Skill is super-fast, which benefits our Ryzen processor a fair amount, and 16GB is more than sufficient for VR gaming. If you prefer your systems super-charged, 32GB would be fine, too, but it’s an unnecessary addition.
The MSI mobo worked well, but any X570 board would’ve done the job. With PCIe 4.0, these boards tend to be a bit more pricey, but checking sales should net you a comparable board for a lower price. The same goes for the power supply, although the Ion+ 760P is great, and we wouldn’t advise using anything other than fully modular PSUs for this build. All in all, this build achieved everything we wanted. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have
BeatSaber high scores to beat (saber).