5k Budget - Buy Once Cry Once Help

FNGsim · Oct 7, 2022

Building my first VR rig with no sim experience and prefer to buy once cry once.

EDIT UPDATE: I'm still looking for what's the best breathable bucket seat for comfort $300-$500? I purchased the rest of the important stuff. A good handbrake and an inverted pedal solution is next up.

SEAT
I want something comfortable that breaths well and ideally $300- $500. I don't want pleather, how is alcantara or should I go with cloth? Any recliner seats that don't flex with higher end hardware, or stick to buckets? Any recommendations for seat slider if the seat doesn't come with one? Help me fill in a few suggestions below.

NRG
OMP
Cobra
Recaro
Sparco

HANDBRAKE
What's the most realistic feeling under $250? Is it worth spending more than the ebay ones?

Fanatec Clubsport v1.5
VNM
Heusinkveld
eBay
Amazon

ADD-ONS
Any advice on these?

Inverted pedals mount
Heel plate
Buttkicker Gamer 2 or similar solution (what won't piss off my wife?)
Wind or fan system
Risers or casters (any clean solution that doesn't stick out from frame?
Keyboard and mouse tray
Shifter / handbrake mount
Wheel mounts or stands

PURCHASED
Am I missing anything?

Simtrec ProPedal GT
TK Racing Pro Chassis
Simagic Alpha Mini
Simagic FX Dual Clutch
Simagic GT1 Round
Simagic Quick Release
Fanatec Clubsport v1.5 (wish I could justify the prosim)
HP Reverb G2
HP Omen 30L (i7-10700k / GeForce RTX 3090)

Deleted member 1066209 · Oct 8, 2022

Your laptop's specs seem unlikely to fully utilize the Reverb G2. It's also going to perform poorly after a certain amount of playtime, since it'll throttle down the CPU and GPU speeds due to high temperatures (because it's a laptop).

I recommend you build a dedicated PC with good cooling. Can you invest any additional money towards the PC, or are you strictly limited to a $5k budget overall? I'm assuming US Dollars, right?

Also, do you think you'll ever consider adding motion to your sim rig in the future?

FNGsim · Oct 8, 2022

That's a bummer but understandable. I can get a dedicated PC too but I don't have a need for it outside of sim racing so I would look at used on ebay or locally. What's the min specs I need to max out the G2 for any games?

I might be interested in motion in the future but that's probably 1-3 years out and I would change chassis if needed then. I found an open box deal for the TK Racer Pro for $630 today at my local microcenter. Haven't seen much info on it and can still return it. I don't want to waste money on a rig that will flex.

stigs2cousin · Oct 8, 2022

FNGsim said:
TK Racer Pro
I found an open box deal for the TK Racer Pro for $630 today at my local microcenter. Haven't seen much info on it and can still return it. I don't want to waste money on a rig that will flex.

"Armchair quarterbacking" from the photos I´d take that as the stiffest and most rigid of your selection because it has the uprights mounted with overlap to the frame and three brackets per side.
I also like the front mount as it is the most solid option.

All of your choices have the sheet metal pedal plate which will not hold up to high end / high pressure pedals, at least not if they are individually mounted.

It would be no big deal to design a pedal mount from profile, even if it has to be inverted.
( the jury is still out on this one, when changing pedal sets I wanted to swap to inverted mounts later as I had on my first rig. I never bothered.)

For pedals I´m Heusinkveld all the way, ( cry once....)
It was Sprints for me, one year later i wonder if Ultimates.... ( they work very well, but I trained my leg to max out the sprints rather casually)
No Idea if the "need to be hydraulic" or have "to have a realistic clutch feel", in my opinion you feel this things only when "dryhumping" your pedals, when racing it´s only about feedback and consistency.
My HSV Sprints are set really short so a damper would do zilch on the brake, maybe I´ll try one the accelerator when I find the time.

There is only one "breathable bucket seat" which is :

https://sim.o-rouge.com/

A middle price recliner will probably not hold up to the forces you use on high end pedal seats, but even cheap bucket seats can flex.

A solution would be a (high end) real car seat which also takes care of the slider problem.
The trick would be to find one that wouldn´t flex, has cooling and is not to hard to mount as OEM seats don´t bother with symmetric mounting points.
( carefull to choose one without thorax airbag, I don´t want explosives in my living room)

Can´t comment on your wheel base choice, but would recommend to leave of shifter and handbrake for the first round to put that money into the other stuff.
( VNM shifter works quite well, handbrake looks good too. Stay away from Fanatec, reliability seems to be spotty, especially with the shifter and customer service is a big pain in the ass.)

For some more research here´s the "Pope of Simracing reviews", you can find all you need to know there:

https://simracinggarage.com/category/reviews/

Also there a threads on hydraulic pedals, seats and so forth in this forum, have at it.

MFG Carsten

RCHeliguy · Oct 9, 2022

$5K and buy once... It's a nice idea.

Set a reminder on your calendar for a couple years from now and see how well this ages.

FNGsim · Oct 11, 2022

justwannadl said:
Your laptop's specs seem unlikely to fully utilize the Reverb G2. It's also going to perform poorly after a certain amount of playtime, since it'll throttle down the CPU and GPU speeds due to high temperatures (because it's a laptop).

I recommend you build a dedicated PC with good cooling. Can you invest any additional money towards the PC, or are you strictly limited to a $5k budget overall? I'm assuming US Dollars, right?

Also, do you think you'll ever consider adding motion to your sim rig in the future?

Yeah did some brief testing and it struggled quite a bit while getting exceptionally hot. I just bought a used Omen 30L with RTX 3090 and i7-10700k for 1.2k USD so not too over budget. However now I need a monitor ideally. I am thinking a 34" Samsung G5 will fit the width of my frame okay and be useful for VR breaks.

stigs2cousin said:
"Armchair quarterbacking" from the photos I´d take that as the stiffest and most rigid of your selection because it has the uprights mounted with overlap to the frame and three brackets per side.
I also like the front mount as it is the most solid option.

All of your choices have the sheet metal pedal plate which will not hold up to high end / high pressure pedals, at least not if they are individually mounted.

It would be no big deal to design a pedal mount from profile, even if it has to be inverted.
( the jury is still out on this one, when changing pedal sets I wanted to swap to inverted mounts later as I had on my first rig. I never bothered.)

For pedals I´m Heusinkveld all the way, ( cry once....)
It was Sprints for me, one year later i wonder if Ultimates.... ( they work very well, but I trained my leg to max out the sprints rather casually)
No Idea if the "need to be hydraulic" or have "to have a realistic clutch feel", in my opinion you feel this things only when "dryhumping" your pedals, when racing it´s only about feedback and consistency.
My HSV Sprints are set really short so a damper would do zilch on the brake, maybe I´ll try one the accelerator when I find the time.

There is only one "breathable bucket seat" which is :

https://sim.o-rouge.com/

A middle price recliner will probably not hold up to the forces you use on high end pedal seats, but even cheap bucket seats can flex.

A solution would be a (high end) real car seat which also takes care of the slider problem.
The trick would be to find one that wouldn´t flex, has cooling and is not to hard to mount as OEM seats don´t bother with symmetric mounting points.
( carefull to choose one without thorax airbag, I don´t want explosives in my living room)

Can´t comment on your wheel base choice, but would recommend to leave of shifter and handbrake for the first round to put that money into the other stuff.
( VNM shifter works quite well, handbrake looks good too. Stay away from Fanatec, reliability seems to be spotty, especially with the shifter and customer service is a big pain in the ass.)

For some more research here´s the "Pope of Simracing reviews", you can find all you need to know there:

https://simracinggarage.com/category/reviews/

Also there a threads on hydraulic pedals, seats and so forth in this forum, have at it.

MFG Carsten

Thanks for the detailed feedback! Comparing photos I'm definitely glad I picked this deal up; it does seem much beefier than the others. The front mount fit my Simagic Alpha Mini too. One thing to note on the frame is that the photos online are wrong. The pedal plate has much fewer mounting options but is still strong.

I ended up buying the Simtrec pedals and they arrive Thursday. The instructions look a bit overwhelming but looking forward to dialing them eventually.

I'll check out the seat suggestion. I definitely don't want flex. The frame actually came with sliders plus adjustable riser mounts for a bucket seat. I'm looking for aesthetics a bit too so going to pass on any seats from cars that aren't racing buckets.

I was going to get the VNM shifter but the loose x-axis killed it for me from watching youtube reviews. I know the Fanatec shifter is prone to issues so I bought it direct.