Pre-orders now being accepted for Oculus Rift PC bundles, pricing starts at $1,499

[Shawn Knight]

Today is the big day for those looking to save a bit of coin on the purchase of an Oculus Rift and a PC to power the experience as Amazon, Best Buy and the Microsoft Store are now accepting pre-orders for Rift bundles.

Pricing starts at $1,499 for the Asus G11CD-B11 bundle which includes a desktop powered by a quad-core Intel Core i5-6400 processor alongside 8GB of memory and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 graphics card. If you recall, the recommended specs from Oculus VR call for an Intel Core-i5 4590 or greater, at least 8GB of RAM and an Nvidia GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or better.

In terms of pure processing power, this entry-level Asus bundle just barely meets the recommended hardware specs.

On the opposite end of the price spectrum is the Alienware Area 51 bundle. For $3,149, you'll get a desktop loaded with Intel's Core i7-5820K processor (six cores, 12 threads), 16GB of RAM and an Nvidia GTX 980 video card. This configuration also comes with a 128GB SSD and a traditional 2TB hard drive.

Each bundle also includes an Oculus Rift VR headset, sensor, remote, an Xbox One controller and two games: Lucky's Tale and EVE: Valkyrie Founder's Pack.

As of writing, the only three PC makers participating in the Oculus Ready PC program are Asus, Dell and Alienware (Dell's gaming-minded subsidiary). That's likely to change moving forward, assuming of course that Oculus sticks with the program.

If you have the time and / or know-how to build your own system, that's probably the best route to go as you can get the exact combination of hardware you're after. Another option is to simply upgrade your existing machine if it doesn't quite meet Oculus' recommended specs.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/63829-pre-orders-now-accepted-oculus-rift-pc-bundles.html

 

[fps4ever]

Pretty hefty price premium for their flagship pc even if you don't build your own.

 

[Technician]

ha...I'd like it if they got rid of the stupid head gear. I want HDR screens to be introduced at a price the masses can afford it so the content will grow.

 

[Uncle Al]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA .... I hope they can see what there smoking with those VR specs ..... cause this boy isn't about to lay out that kind of cabbage!

 

[Bubbajim]

Gulp.

 

[Technician]

Oh, yeah. Bring your own tube of KY when pre-ordering this crap.

 

[Technician]

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Thanks for your generosity Oculus but I think I'll pass up your offer. Dedicated HMD's are already doomed so there's no sense in wasting money there, the future of VR is in the hands of smartphone makers.

 

[Arturo]

I cannot imagine myself playing with that annoying headgear. Bad thing.

 

[Adhmuz]

The specs make sense, my system is somewhere between the recommended and that $3000 system, and recently I've been playing a lot of split screen games on this PC by connecting two 1080p TVs and spanning the desktop to achieve a full screen for each player. Despite having a GTX 970 oc'ed rather well it still drops frame rate on occasion, never bellow 30 but maintaining 60 FPS across the extra real estate proves to be a challenge, dipping into the 40s quite a bit. Given this is essentially what VR is doing in the headset, I understand the need for a high end system, perhaps not a six core i7, but at least a really good quad core is more than necessary from what I've been noticing.

Do keep in mind the frame rate drops most dramatically when we are at furthest ends of the map where it needs to load the most variety of textures, whereas in a VR scenario the textures will not vary so greatly. I also tested this on a HD7950 with 3GB of VRAM and it was almost unplayable at the same settings, lowering details fixed the issue.

The game I've been playing mostly is the new CoD Zombies, perhaps not the best optimized game on PC but it's working pretty well so far. I'll need to do more testing to come to a real solid conclusion however.