Hands-down, the biggest complaint about modern consumer VR technology is the price point. It is, for most people, prohibitively expensive to even get started with high-end virtual reality devices. If you’re part of the subset of the population that owns a compatible Samsung Galaxy phone, then you can jump into the capable Gear VR ecosystem, but otherwise, you’ll probably have to settle for hitting demo booths, trade shows, and friend’s houses to see what the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are capable of. It’s just too expensive right now.
The Oculus Rift currently runs you about $600 and the HTC Vive currently runs you about $800. On top of that, you need a high-end gaming PC. You can either upgrade your existing rig, build one from scratch, or buy a premade VR-ready unit from a mainstream manufacturer. Falcon Northwest, Asus, Newegg, Alienware, and many others all sell VR-ready PCs, but you’ll notice a consistently hefty price tag when you visit those websites. Usually well over the price of the headset itself, resulting in a total “VR setup” cost of $2,000 or more. Yikes.
Then today at VRLA, Roy Taylor, Corporate Vice President of Alliances at AMD, unveiled the ‘Gamer Xtreme VR GXiVR8020A Gaming Desktop‘ in partnership with Cyberpower PC. The desktop goes for $719.99 on Amazon. When I went through the checkout process as a test, it added over $60 in taxes, but the total price stayed below $800.
In terms of what’s under the hood, it’s relatively capable. According to LegitReviews, it actually comes out to be over $100 cheaper than if you were to buy each piece individually — at least in terms of current prices on the market — and runs quite well.
The rig is packed with an Intel i5-6402P Quad Core 2.8GHz CPU, 8GB DDR4 RAM, 1TB HDD, and AMD RX 480 4GB GPU. You’ll also get a copy of Windows 10 Home Edition and a keyboard and mouse for good measure.
For the price-to-value ratio, this can’t really be beat. If you’re on the fence about VR and wanted to find a way to get in at or under $1,500, then this could be your ticket. It’s available now on Amazon.
Update: A previous version of this article listed a coupon code to use in Amazon, but it turns out in order to get the PC at the price shown in the image above from VRLA, you must follow the instructions here on the Cyberpower PC VRLA Promo site.
