2016 may very well be the year that virtual reality hits the mainstream with the impending release of both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. With the Rift set to ship to customers who pre-ordered starting later next month, March 28th, ASUS and Alienware have unveiled their lineups of “Oculus Ready” PCs.
Both manufacturers will be offering their systems either bundled with an Oculus Rift Cv1 headset or without. In terms of hardware configurations most of the bundles will utilize the Intel i5 6400 processor while ASUS & Alienware’s most expensive offerings will use the more powerful Intel Core i7-5820 processor. Depending on price point these prebuilt kits will contain a minimum of 8GB of DDR-4 RAM being reserved for the more expensive configurations. All of these builds, save for the Alienware Area 51, come standard with the Geforce 970, the Area 51 comes with the more powerful Geforce 980.
Pricing will most likely vary depending on region but as PC World points out, if you are in the United States be prepared to spend $1049 for ASUS’ lowest tier Oculus Ready build and $1699 USD for their most expensive (all prices minus cost of Oculus headset). Alienware’s entry level system the X51 R3 is comparable at $1199 but their most expensive model the Area 51 comes in at a mind-blowing $2549 USD! Certainly if you have that much cash to spend on a PC you could build it yourself for much less.
If you want to pre-order any of these systems you can do so (at least in America) at Amazon, Best Buy and oddly enough the Microsoft Store. Alienware has also opened their own Oculus Ready mini site where you can pre-order the X51 (minus Oculus headset).
It’s a bit odd that AMD hardware is nowhere to be found in any of these bundles despite the fact that AMD chipsets and Radeon Graphics Cards appear in the minimum specs released by Oculus. Perhaps this is an oversight? Regardless if you’re on a tighter budget and opt for an AMD rig over an Intel/NVidia combo you might be building it yourself.
Below are the specs for all of the rigs mentioned in this article:
Asus G11CD
Intel Core i5-6400
Nvidia GeForce GTX 970
8GB of DDR4 RAM
1TB hard drive
Asus ROG G20CB
Intel Core i5-6400
GTX 970
16GB of DDR4 RAM
Alienware Area 51
Intel Core i7-5820K
GTX 980
16GB of DDR4 RAM
128GB SSD
2TB hard drive
Alienware X51 R3
Intel Core i5-6400
GeForce GTX 970
8GB of DDR4 RAM
1TB hard drive
