Half-Life: Alyx is a Virtual-Reality FPS game, developed and published by Valve Corporation. Soon after the release on the 23rd of March 2020, it blew us away totally. Personally, it’s one of the best VR games I’ve ever tried!
I compiled a list of 5 VR ready gaming desktop PCs to help you playing Half-Life: Alyx without any stuttering and lagging.
First, of course, it depends on the budget you are willing to spend on a new VR gaming machine. Second, a good starting point would be meeting at least the recommended system requirements. Why recommended and not minimum? Because minimum requirements are based on what developers define that games are playable at the lowest graphic settings values. Whereas the recommended requirements are what is needed to run a game with decent or highest graphical settings with a high enough frame rate for the best VR experience. Not enough frames per second mean possible headaches and Virtual reality sickness.
ENTRY LEVEL
1. Skytech Archangel
MID-RANGE
2. CyberpowerPC Gamer Master
ENTHUSIAST
3. CyberpowerPC Gamer Supreme
HIGH-END
4. iBUYPOWER Pro Gaming
ENTRY LEVEL
1. Skytech Archangel
MID-RANGE
2. CyberpowerPC Gamer Master
ENTHUSIAST
3. CyberpowerPC Gamer Supreme
HIGH-END
4. iBUYPOWER Pro Gaming
Last update on 2024-04-19.
Half-Life: Alyx System Requirements
Minimum
- OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 10
- PROCESSOR: Core i5-7500 / Ryzen 5 1600
- GRAPHICS: GTX 1060 / RX 580 – 6GB VRAM
- MEMORY: 12 GB RAM
source: https://store.steampowered.com/app/546560/HalfLife_Alyx/
Recommended
There are no official system requirements yet released. However, you should aim for at least an RTX 2070 SUPER if you want to play the game smoothly on any VR headset.
What computer parts are the most important for running Half-Life: Alyx smoothly?
Graphics Card
A graphics card (or GPU, short of “Graphics Processing Unit”) is undoubtedly one of the most important hardware parts of a gaming PC. It handles all the processing and rendering of what you see on the display and directly affects the quality of the textures, anti-aliasing, frame rate, and such…
The more powerful it is, the more smoothly and realistically the game runs.
CPU
A processor or CPU (short for “Central Processing Unit”) also significantly impacts the overall gaming performance. It handles all the gameplay, instructions, loading different assets of the game, etc.
It basically calculates all the logic behind the scene.
Memory
Computer memory or RAM (short for “Random Access Memory”) stores all the short-term bits of information that are being accessed and used by the CPU constantly. It is a kind of temporary storage for all the calculated results coming from the CPU.
The more RAM you have the more information the processor can store in it simultaneously.
Storage
This is a piece of computer hardware that contains all the data that the PC can access and operate with. It includes everything, from the operating system to the games installed.
The most common consumer class types of SDDs are SATA SSD or NVMe. Although using different bus interfaces and having different connections, the main difference between them is read/write speed. Here’s a little speed comparison about average read/write speed of all the disk drives types mentioned:
-
- SATA 3 – up to 550MB/second
- NVMe – up to 3500MB/second
Traditional HDDs can be used for secondary storage drive only. They are just obsolete.
What is the Best Gaming Desktop PC for Half-Life: Alyx?
There is no “the best one”. Each one of the machines listed here would run the game just fine, smoothly without any stuttering. But as mentioned previously, it also depends on how much you willing to go spend. You cannot expect the same performance form the lowest budget PC to the highest one. Obviously. 🙂
Regarding performance, it’s mainly all about how much frames per second a gaming pc can output to the VR headset.
About FRAMES PER SECOND (FPS):
What is FPS? It is the number of consecutive images produced onto the headset each second. (Note: In gaming FPS also stands for First Person Shooter but this is not the case here.)
How many FPS is needed? – It is not yet known for sure how many FPS the human eye and brain can process. But they predict it could be around 200. For the best VR experience, the FPS must be close to the headset maximum all the time. Possibly higher. Of course, you can raise or lower graphics settings to reach the desired FPS.
NOTE: Having a powerful PC (especially powerful GPU), which can maintain a high FPS, is not only crucial for the best visual VR experience. Having FPS too low may cause VR sickness and headaches, which is not pleasant at all, trust me on this. 🙂
How to compile a list of desktop gaming PCs, being able to run Half-Life: Alyx?
All gaming PCs can be categorized into 4 types:
ENTRY LEVEL, MID-RANGE, ENHUSIAST, HIGH-END and SPECIAL.
- Within a price range of each type, I create a larger list of PCs, all meeting the game requirements.
Even if requirements seem relatively low, I always look for machines that have the latest hardware. Hell, when you’re buying new, go for new. This also means it would serve you for quite a few years. Or maybe you want to try some new game, that requires a more powerful machine.
- Check user reviews and gameplay videos.
I find this to be an invaluable piece of information, as it comes directly from actual owners of specific gaming PCs or similar, running the game.
- Check the benchmarks and price/performance ratio.
There’s one hell of a service called UserBenchmark. Those guys compute and analyze millions of benchmarks coming directly from gamers around the globe. At the type of writing, they are more than 120 million benchmarks with more than a million different components. This database is damn huge and it gives a rough estimate of how much FPS can a PC render the specific game, running at specific resolution and graphic quality.
Also, I check the benchmarks on the forums and other benchmarking websites.
- Handpick 5 of them.
I handpick the machines in each price range. With price/performance factor taking into consideration. No one wants to pay more than he gets.
ENTRY LEVEL
Key Components: CPU: i5-9400F, i7-9700F or Ryzen 5 3600 GPU: GTX 1660 Ti or Radeon RX 590 RAM: at least 16GB STORAGE: NVMe or SATA SSD
Gets you up and running with decent components.
Skytech Archangel Gaming Computer
Last update on 2024-04-19.
Technical Details:
| Ryzen 5 3600 | |
| GTX 1660 SUPER | |
| 16GB DDR4 | |
| 512GB SSD |
Expected Unconstrained Framerate
Quality Preset
LOW: 110 FPS
MEDIUM: 95 FPS
HIGH and more: not recommended
MID-RANGE
Key Components: CPU: i7-9700K, i9-9900K or Ryzen 7 3700X GPU: RTX 2060 Super or Radeon RX 5700 XT RAM: at least 16GB STORAGE: SATA or NVMe SSD
The best price/performance components.
CyberpowerPC Gamer Master
Last update on 2024-04-19.
Technical Details:
| Ryzen 7 3700X | |
| RTX 2060 SUPER | |
| 16GB DDR4 | |
| 240GB SSD + 2TB HDD |
Expected Unconstrained Framerate
Quality Preset
LOW: overkill
MEDIUM: overkill
HIGH: 130 FPS
ULTRA: 140 PFS
ENTHUSIAST
Key Components: CPU: i9-9700K, i9-9900K or Ryzen 7 3700X GPU: RTX 2070 Super or Radeon RX 5700 XT RAM: at least 16GB STORAGE: SATA or NVMe SSD
High-end components, focus on price/performance factor.
CyberpowerPC Gamer Supreme
Last update on 2024-04-11.
Technical Details:
| i7-9700K | |
| RTX 2070 SUPER | |
| 16GB DDR4 | |
| 1TB PCI-E NVMe SSD |
Expected Unconstrained Framerate
Quality Preset
LOW: overkill
MEDIUM: overkill
HIGH: 160 FPS
ULTRA: 150 PFS
HIGH-END
Key Components: CPU: i7-9900K or Ryzen 9 3900X GPU: RTX 2080 SUPER RAM: at least 32GB STORAGE: SATA or NVMe SSD
High-end components for a maximum performance.
iBUYPOWER Pro Gaming
Last update on 2024-04-19.
Technical Details:
| Ryzen 9 3900X | |
| RTX 2080 SUPER | |
| 32GB DDR4 |
|
| 1TB SSD Drive |
Expected Unconstrained Framerate
Quality Preset
LOW: overkill
MEDIUM: overkill
HIGH: overkill
ULTRA: 180 PFS
ULTRA
Key Components: CPU: Ryzen 9 3900XT or Ryzen 9 3950X GPU: RTX 2080 Ti (or 2x) RAM: 64GB+ STORAGE: NVMe SSD
Core components the fastest available, possibly fancy RGB lightning, water cooling, and all that jazz.
CUK Mantis Gaming PC
No products found.
Technical Details:
| Ryzen 9 3900XT | |
| RTX 2080 Ti | |
| 64GB DDR4 |
|
| 1TB NVMe SSD + 2TB HDD |
Quality Preset
LOW: overkill
MEDIUM: overkill
HIGH: overkill
ULTRA: 180 FPS
ULTRA + MAX SS: 130 FPS
Conclusion
Note that Half-Life: Alyx is an incredibly well-optimized game that automatically leverages the headroom of a video card to deliver outstanding visuals.
All these gaming PCs would run Half-Life: Alyx just fine. Staying within the reasonable game settings for specific GPU you can enjoy playing the game smoothly. If you have a large budget to spend then go for HIGH-END (or even ULTRA) and crank the graphics settings up to the roof. Otherwise, the RECOMMENDED machine is a great deal and compensation between price and performance.
Have fun playing the game!
Take care! 🙂