Where to source a good PC at a good price for iRacing these days? 49” Single curved monitor

 

I build PCs for sim racers,Gamers and productivity.

 

The single monitor simplifies things.

Need a strong GPU, mostly.

iRacing scales automatically to the hardware used. Works well.

No need to go crazy. The principal of Velocity Micro in Richmond tracks a GT2RS really quickly at VIR and is a good source if you want to go crazy.

 

Definitely do a custom PC rather than buy a computer for HP, Dell, etc (as pre-built computers are typically difficult to upgrade expand over time, which you will likely need to do). MicroCenter is quite good if you have one near you -- their techs don't typically know a lot about iRacing, but they do tend to have pretty good knowledge about which components to choose. We're still using our MicroCenter case from 2016 (though every component in it has been upgraded several times).

iRacing has become pretty CPU intensive (worsened by the fact that much of it runs on only a single core), so CPU is very important these days. I didn't get much improvement, going from a 3070 to a 4090 graphics card, and frame rate is still sometimes bottlenecked a bit by an Intel i9 that's maybe 3 years old.

 

I just bought a PC for iRacing last November. I found that the prebuilt PCs had better deals than the custom builds. So, what I did was figure out what I thought my min graphics card requirement was for what I wanted to run (Quest 3) and searched based on that. For me, that was a 4060, based on various forum posts. I ended up finding a PC with the 4060, i7-14700F, 32GB ram, and a 1TB SSD for $930. It runs iRacing on the quest 3 at 90fps.

 

That's all you need to see the radio antenna on the outside of the Keyhole at Mid-Ohio, the telephone pole at T5 at Road Atlanta with the transformer on it and the tall light you draw a bead on for Bishops at Sebring drawn in plenty of time to see them.

Just need reference points. Period.

 

Thanks all for your input, good to hear the spectrum of options out there. Wish Microcenter was closer to me, would save me a ton on shipping!

 

I recently built a new PC for iRacing specifically. I always wanted to build my own and finally did it. It was fun but I get why some may not want to. Building a PC ensures all of the components are good, modular, upgradable, and well balanced for the use case. For those that don't want to build on their own, you can spec one out and then have it built. Microcenter offers this service. All of my previous computers were pre-built. They worked okay but there were always weak points and upgrade options were limited.

I also had a 49" ultra-wide and it was fairly easy to drive. You don't really need to go crazy on specs to get good FPS. In my case I built a performance PC with some decent specs, enough so that I ended up upgrading to a 57" (dual 4k). The PC is working great with that as well!

As others have stated, the most important component is the CPU with iRacing, with the GPU as second. I'd recommend to get the best CPU that your budget allows. I went for the current top dog in gaming, the AMD 9800X3D. It is a beast. I have tons of headroom even with race starts. Even launching iRacing is so much faster. I highly recommend this route if you can find one.

For GPU, since you have an ultra-wide, you could consider AMD. I originally started looking at them because Nvidia cars were impossible to find at MSRP. The primary drawback with AMD is triples, but since you have an ultra-wide, consider AMD. I am running a Radeon 7900XTX (which was available AND on sale!) and getting 120-180 FPS with dual 4K consistently and fairly high graphics settings (but not maxed out). The availability of AMD cards is much better than Nvidia. I lot of people talk them down but they work very well for iRacing which does not use raytracing. All that matters is the rasterization performance which AMD does well. AMD just released the 9070XT which should run dual 1440 on a 49" very well and might be much more available than 50 series cards. Also the price is great at ~$600 although since they just release they are mostly sold out.

The rest of the components are not as critical, but there are some min recommendations for memory, SSD, RAM, etc. I am happy to share my specs if you want them. I did a lot of recent research prior to build. FWIW, my total cost was about $2200 for the PC.

 

Regarding CPU load, it depends a lot on what you are using iRacing for. If you're running solo practice sessions, or sessions with only a few cars on track, then CPU requirements are much lower. If you're racing with large or full grids, CPU requirements are much higher. The worst case is probably the Daytona 24 hours race, which has a full grid in every split with up to 16 different car types on track -- that uses a lot of CPU.

 

Good point. I’m just getting started, so I’m mostly running mx5-cup and at lower levels. There’s usually only around 6 cars on track. The other 6 are off in the grass somewhere. 🤣

 

I second the recommendation for a 9800X3D. Lots of reviews praising its excellence, and it really isn’t too expensive for its capabilities.