VR In a Toolbox, on a budget
Recently I started on a project to be able to take my VR headset around with me on the go much easier than before.
One of the things that I like the most about the VR Headset that I own is that it uses the newer technology of inside out tracking, meaning instead of requiring base stations put in corners of the room I want to use my headset in, I take take it between multiple rooms and even locations with ease.
However before when I’ve taken it to show friends and family and the main thing is transporting my computer, the weight and size of it isn’t too much of an issue but more the amount of cables I usually have plugged into it along with risk of damaging it are concerns.
Oh, and my laptop just can’t cut it as for portability I have a netbook with an Intel Pentium.
The idea
A portable computer on a budget .
Essentially the main game to have to demo is Beatsaber in my view, it’s a nice simple game that most people can get going with quickly. While there’s other more advanced VR games this seemed the best to pick for low hardware requirements while fun for beginners to play.
Preliminary part research.
From where I upgraded my computer back in June I still had a spare motherboard, I had a spare dual core CPU too but knowing it would need slightly more oomph swapped that with the CPU in my NAS. It isn’t the best being only an haswell i5-4460 and under almost every VR recommended specs but it should do.
For ram I had 8GB spare from where the nas had been upgraded to 16GB of DDR3 when I upgraded my computer to Ryzen. And finally I have spare sata drives and a power supply from another project.
Finally I got a Windows 10 license, really the only downside of a Windows mixed reality headset is no Linux support.
The main issue: GPU
Now I do have a few old spare GPUs in my computer collection with the best two being a matching pair of 5870s for crossfire, I knew it would be a push for VR but still worth trying.
Soft run
So with all of the parts I plugged them all in and installed Windows, installed drivers etc and then installed steam ready for testing.
I installed the Steam VR test to begin with, while I’d say The LAB is more of a complex game than beat saber based on the noise my main computer’s GPU makes instead it was still an easy benchmark.
And well, about what to be expected happened and it scored terrible in the test.
However to my surprise the CPU tested fine, so it was then onto trying beat saber. Except…
Windows Mixed Reality Requirements
Unfortunately the GPU didn’t meet WMRs requirements, specifically it requires support for “WDDM 2.2” and while it might have been possible to force it I then decided I needed to find a new GPU at a budget of £60 or less.
CPU Bottleneck?
However before deciding to do this I also needed to see if the CPU needed upgrading, while it was fine in the Steam VR Test above as on paper it was below all recommended specifications I wanted to make sure it was fine before buying a better GPU to find the CPU also needed replacing.
So the simple way to test, put a £400 GPU into it!
I took my 5700XT Out of my computer and installed it on the test setup, configured the latest radeon drivers and ran the Steam VR benchmark expecting to see some CPU bottleneck at play.
While blurry, the results were around the same as if I ran them on my PC with a 2700X CPU which I was happy with. So GPU Hunting I went!
New GPU!
To begin I found benchmarks of GPUs on userbenchmark.com recommended by games of which from a freind know an RX460 is OK along with a GTX 960 recommended by the games. As the RX460 was the worst of the two I decided to use this as the baseline.
Next I usually use as a baseline prices at CEX as a reference of which in my budget of £60 (being £60 exact) found the R9 280X as the best choice for AMD and a GTX 960 on the Nvidia side. When looking on User benchmark the scores for the 280X were much better so I decided to go for that.
After bidding around on eBay I then won one for £40 so it was then time to start building.
The Box
I wanted to make this system easy to transport around with me so a box with some kind of carry handle was crucial.
I originally planned to build a box out of wood to a more specific size, however also wanting it to be of a good build quality was unsure, after asking my Grandad who done many woodworking projects in his time I decided to look at other routes. After looking around at what I had I then found an old toolbox that the same Grandad had built me over 15 years ago and he suggested I used that to put it all in.
Putting it together
I began putting the system together while I was waiting for the GPU to arrive so started with the motherboard and power supply, I tried a few different orientations and then settled on the final layout.
To mount the motherboard in I first positioned the motherboard and used a sharpie to mark each of the 6 holes, I then screwed mounts onto the 6 locations on the motherboard so they were in the motherboard.
Finally I then placed a blob of super glue on the 6 marked locations and placed the motherboard down, this then meant that the 6 mounts screwed into the motherboard stuck to the toolbox and the motherboard can be unscrewed if I want to remove it.
For the PSU I mounted this in by two modesty blocks clamping down two sides and then a screw at the edge on the top to keep it firmly in place. I did have to move this back slightly of which I followed the same steps and to keep the blocks in place more secure also used super glue as well. However the PSU can be removed easily enough still.
The GPU was the trickiest bit to mount in as with the rest I wanted to be able to easily remove it so I whipped up a 3D Printed bracket, the original idea was the bracket to go over the entire width of the GPU but as it was a bit too tall for my printer’s work area I split it into two smaller mounts which worked better.
I found that due to the orientation of the motherboard it meant the USB3 sockets were slightly too far away from the HDMI port on the GPU so I then also added a short USB3 hub to use as an extenstion.
Finally I added in a pair of USB Speakers I had spare and a small 7" LCD I brought for another project and it was complete!
Testing
I then began testing and quickly ran into the first issue when setting it up. The HDD I originally used wasn’t up to the task and had a constant clicking noise developing so I decided to buy a cheap £16 SSD off amazon, while only 120GB I didn’t need a lot of space as I’ve noticed most VR games are only a few GB in size.
Upon running the steamvr benchmark the test came out at the bottom end of the yellow area meaning it can succesfully run at low quality but with no frames under 90FPS which was the goal.
Upon loading WMR I experienced an issue I had on my computer and after some diagnostics found this was because the USB hub was causing issues despite claiming to be USB3, instead I’ve ordered a short USB3 ext instead and we’ll see how that performs but fornow I plug it directly in.
I then installed beatsaber and loaded it up and easily played for over half an hour, while I’m not at expert or expert+ I didn’t notice any issues playing any song I tried on hard.
I tried to find issues with speed but even the guis are all responsive and fine after replacing the HDD with an SSD. Load times are very quick and really nothing to critacise about it.
V2?
One of the things I’ve been most surprised about is how well this system has worked to the point where I’m considering essentially to re-build it as a Mini ITX Computer which would be even more compact and on my desk instead. (This is because it’s a WMR headset I can’t use linux to have a quick game, where as with this to the side I can play a few rounds of beatsaber while waiting for SD card images to compile).
While the Steam VR Test now comes out at around a quality level 1.4 with no frames under 90 for a quick beatsaber session it works perfectly fine, I don’t expect it to play say Tetris Effect or Doctor Who Edge Of Time (when that comes out).
Finally for this project I took the CPU out of my NAS and replaced that with a spare dual core, however for many tasks I get my NAS to do this hasn’t been powerful enough. And gives me more of a reason to switch to ITX as I can choose a different CPU socket which has cheaper processors on the second hand market.
I suspect there’ll be a V2 update posted within around 1 months time.
Recommended Requirements
One thing that is interesting is the minimum requirements stated by most VR games, the graphics card is borderline for most games and well under for others and it is the bottleneck in this system.
However the thing I’ve been most surprised about is the CPU, while looking for a CPU I decided to see how little proccessing power beat saber and the steamvr test required.
Essentially I set the i5 to Dual Core mode and the steamVR test only had 1 frame CPU limited and beat saber worked perfectly fine too. All I can guess is Beatsaber is very optimised or such.
I’m not actually that surprised, there isn’t many random AI in any of these games, and they’re also extremely small in size with most of my VR games under 5GB each vs the 60–80 per game for some others I own now.
I suspect it’s more because they can ensure a smooth experience easier by overrating, plus not many people would say pair a £500 GPU with a 6 Year old CPU that costs £20.
Cost
Overall this system only cost around £60 to put together as all of the other parts I had spare. However for V2 I’ll post a bigger cost breakdown as I’m buying some more parts to have it as it’s own system.
