Configuring a PC for Virtual Reality (VR)

Virtual Reality gaming has been a long time coming, and it's stronger than ever; for those who have taken the plunge – they're already enjoying the greener grass on the other side. So, what does it take to join them?

The most vital thing to keep in mind is that in order to really trick your eyes & brain into thinking the virtual reality you're seeing through your headset is your actual reality – so, for an immersive experience – you want to ensure a smooth frame rate while also maintaining beautiful graphics settings. This means having some powerful PC hardware to feed into the VR headset.

What can be a major factor in ensuring you're not unnecessarily overspending on PC hardware, is knowing your desired VR headset's hardware specs, most importantly the resolution & refresh rate, (as well as double-checking the headset's other minimum requirements) which informs your PC hardware selection criteria.

While some headsets can have seemingly entry-level and outdated hardware requirements, the likes of which are effortlessly exceeded with modern PC components, it's often the case that these are the minimum requirements to get the headset running with the PC. Which is to say it's unlikely that it would provide a very satisfying gaming experience, especially in demanding titles.

Graphics/Video card (GPU)

This is the one doing the heavy-lifting in gaming, and it's certainly true in VR gaming. The GPU will be responsible for rendering your high-resolution images at high frame rates, to keep you immersed in your virtual reality.

By selecting a high-end modern GPU from the likes of Nvidia & AMD, you will earn yourself the often-necessary connectivity such as HDMI 2.0+ port(s), and DisplayPort 1.4+ port(s). Ensure the GPU's ports match your headset's requirements!

GPU options with high VRAM could be advantageous, so try to limit your selections to 8GB and above for the graphics card. Remember, this isn't the system memory (RAM) we're talking about; it's the Video card's dedicated RAM (VRAM)!

Nvidia's RTX series of GeForce cards come with dedicated ray-tracing cores to handle ray-traced reflections, shadows, global illumination, ambient occlusion, and caustics, as well as full path tracing for complex simulations (as supported by the game in question). While this has been a feature of Nvidia's GeForce lineup for some years now, each newer generation brings better performance and new features to maximise the eye-candy.

AMD's 9000 series of Radeon GPUs embrace ray-tracing support natively for the first time, so these options can also be considered as a worthy alternative to Nvidia.

At the time of writing, Intel's Arc graphics cards do not seem to have great Virtual Reality support, so we wouldn't recommend this unless you know what you're getting into.

People often say to go for the best performing GPU that you can afford when considering VR performance, and we'd say that's true as long as it doesn't mean sacrificing important performance elsewhere.

Processor (CPU)

A relatively modern, mid-range or above CPU has been adequate for many years when it comes to purely gaming use-cases.

Typically speaking, for gaming, faster single-core performance is preferred rather than high core-count (once you've already got 6-8 cores). Faster cores equals lower latency support, so don't skimp too much on this!

Intel's i5/U5 or i7/U7, and AMD's Ryzen R5 or R7 should be perfectly adequate options.

System Memory (RAM)

16GB is largely considered to be the minimum recommended amount of RAM for VR gaming, but we believe we've recently turned the corner on 32GB of RAM being the new minimum suggestion for gaming in general.

Faster RAM speeds (aka "OC" RAM; measured in MHz / MT/s) can often contribute to marginally better gaming performance (FPS).

Storage (SSD / HDD)

As cost-effective as hard drive storage is for the storage capacity offered, SSDs are dramatically faster. More and more, we're seeing games require being installed onto an SSD rather than a hard drive with very obvious performance differences between the two (SSDs being better, of course). To ensure your immersion isn't broken by some texture taking too long to load into your GPU's VRAM because of a storage bottleneck, ensure you have adequate SSD storage in your PC for your games!

Motherboard

Apart from the CPU & RAM compatibility (which is pretty straightforward and our PC builder greatly assists with that by only presenting compatible options to begin with, and pre-built PC options are built & tested before being listed, meaning they can't be incompatible), there isn't much to worry about. Every motherboard grants a minimum of 4-6x USB ports at the rear, with 2-4x of them being USB 3.0+ typically, so as long as you avoid plugging in your keyboard and mouse into an unnecessary USB 3.0 port, you should be set. With the GPU being responsible for the HDMI or DisplayPort even if the motherboard also has them; you don't need to worry about video outputs on the motherboard.

Practically all motherboards that we see & sell these days come with WiFi 6(e) or WiFi 7 + Bluetooth connectivity built-in, so if you do need to move your PC around to suit your VR needs, you should be able to still connect to your network to get internet, etc.

Minimum suggested hardware

If we make some generalisations, and assume that you would want some of the realistic ray-tracing to help your immersion, we'd suggest the following minimum requirements to ensure you have a decent time.

• Processor (CPU): Intel i5 12th/13th/14th Generation, Intel Ultra 5 200 Series (15th Generation) or later, AMD's AM4 Ryzen R5 5000 Series, AMD's AM5 R5 7000 Series or later
• System Memory (RAM): 16GB DDR4/DDR5
• Graphics/Video card (GPU): Nvidia RTX 2070+, Nvidia RTX 3060+, Nvidia RTX 4060+, Nvidia RTX 5060+, AMD Radeon 9070+

Of course, exceeding the above if your budget allows would grant you an even better experience, so as is usually the case; don't aim for the bottom price while expecting the best performance!

Touching briefly on future-proofing: we don't often encourage future-proofing, as it boils down to overpaying for something today that you may never get around to using within the lifespan of you using the system in question, but: over-doing it a little bit here and there can grant you better experiences in the here and now, and any other more demanding titles that may be just around the corner. With that being said, if you do find your needs dramatically increasing as time passes, you're often better off just upgrading bit by bit at the time of need.