Iracing

[hoodpin]

This may have been asked on here before, looking to get the late models and modifieds on iracing, what is a good gaming pc to get. Not looking to break the bank, I'm sure the more you spend the better they are, just looking to get a good computer. Any info appreciated.

[JCSullivan00]

You will get the most bang for your buck by piecing together your own computer. Google, budget iracing computer, and check out websites like pcpartpicker, tiger direct, and new egg. Putting a computer together is very easy, especially with all the online resources to walk you through it, and you don't get a ton of bloatware like you would buying a pre-assembled model. Be prepared to spend a little on a graphics card. The bitcoin crowd has really driven up the price.

[Kryptonite17]

My advice is spend the money the first time. Buy a good pc because it's addicting and you'll want to run it at better quality and graphics once you play it. I bought the basic pc starting out with just barely getting by the requiremts to run iracing. Three months later I was selling it to buy a new one to run the graphics on high and fast enough to run a VR headset. Welcome to iracing and good luck!

[chupp n bloomer fan]

I have a Dell 8700 XPS. Which is now a middle of the road PC. The only place I’m lacking is a video card. A good video card is around $275-$400. Top ones are $600+. I’m looking at the Zotac Amp 1060 non compact one. It’s about $335.

If you don’t wanna build your own, which I didn’t, and yes, there’s tons of useless crap on it you just delete, somewhere around a grand is a good spot. I7 processor with a good 1060 or better graphics card. The 1080 Titan is the best one I believe, but they start at about $650-$750+.

I got iRacing in June, and it’s good. If you get burnt out on dirt, I switch to oval asphalt and road course racing.

[Stefan2k4]

One question to think about is what kind of display/monitor do you want to use? This is important because it will dictate what kind and how powerful your video card needs to be. Playing at 4k resolution is going to require a much more powerful video card than playing at 1080p. Are you going to be using a computer monitor or an HDTV? If you're going to use an HDTV is it 4k or 1080p, and if it is 4k, it needs to have HDMI 2.0 or greater if you want to feed it a 4k signal from a PC, otherwise you'll be getting less than 60Hz framerate, which is no good for gaming. As others have already said the video card will be the most important component. And since video cards have gotten so powerful that they've basically turned into little supercomputers, people have found they can put them to use doing other things like calculating crypto-currency hashes and brute forcing encryption keys. So, the hackers and the cryptcurrency miners have driven up the prices. The top of the line "bleeding edge" cards always carry a price premium, but if you want to game at 4k, you might need one of those. However, if you already have a big screen 1080p HDTV and are willing to play at 1080p, something more middle of the road like the GTX 1060 or 1070 might suffice.

The next most important component will be the Processor. Nowadays processors have multiple "cores". Multiple cores is just a way of saying there are actually more than one processor in the same package. Years ago, if you wanted multiple processors you had to use main boards with multiple sockets. Nowadays, we have multi-core processors, so you can have multiple processors in a single socket. However, not every kind of software really benefits that much from multiple processors. To benefit a lot form multple processors you either have to have a lot of different applications running at the same time, or have software that's that runs many "threads" at the same time and those threads must be somewhat independent from one another, meaning they don't have to stop and wait on each other for some reason. Because of this, most games don't really benefit that much from multiple cores. Therefore, given the choice between a processor that's higher clocked but with fewer cores and a processor that's clocked lower but with more cores, all else being equal, the higher clocked, fewer core processor, will probably play games better.

[TDRacin®]

Good advice posted. Your first question needs to be , "What's my budget?" Then from there you can start figuring out which route to take. As mentioned, building your own is the cheapest route and as simple as putting together Legos. A simple Google search or even a post here will steer you in the right direction of what to get and how to put it together. If for whatever reason you don't want to do that, then purchasing one gets a little tricky! If you're lucky enough to have a Microcenter nearby, you can find really good deals there. Otherwise you're looking at systems from CyberPowerPC, iBuypower, etc. If you want a solid system with no budget or worries in mind, then I would recommend Main Performance PC's- https://www.mainperformancepc.com/

Budget, setup (single monitor, triples, VR), build vs pre-built all need to be answered first. Think about it and come back with that info. iRacing is the coolest racing sim out there and well worth the effort and money involved!