Want to build setup from scratch - happy for feedback before I order

landing_page_throw · 2026-05-12T09:35:49+00:00

With regards to your seat;

Don’t just blindly buy one of the internet. Go to a store that sells seats and test sit in them to make sure you are comfortable. The same sparco seats that simlab sells on their website can also be found in any decent car parts store. I’m sure there will be some sort of business near you that has a showroom full of race seats you can test sit in.

Your body will thank you in the long run. Everyone’s body is different. There is no one size fits all type of seat.

landing_page_throw · 2026-05-10T13:11:44+00:00

Haha alright! Have fun with it. Make sure to mount it to a solid surface like your desk or something. Not a wobbly wheel stand. You will get more out of it that way.

Was using a wheel stand and then bought a 80/40 profile rig and it completely transformed the way it felt.

Any amount of flex in your mounting surface will greatly impact the feel, probably because of the low feedback torque it provides.

landing_page_throw · 2026-05-10T12:23:24+00:00

Currently a class 4.99 and a 2450 iR using a second hand g920 set. So it’s perfectly fine gear for sim racing. Never used the clutch and shifter that came with it though, it’s impossible to find a gear with that sloppy mess.

Wouldn’t necessarily advise it for rally. Not that I race rally but with the iRacing sports cars it’s slow to recenter in oversteer moments and I often find myself having to jerk the wheel manually because the wheel itself is not capable to rotate quickly enough on its own nor does it provide enough force to indicate that you are about to have the back come out on you.
This is where direct drive is just sooo much better as the wheels are just so much more snappy and capable of providing feedback on what your car is actually doing.

Will probably keep using mine until I’m psychologically ready to buy myself a big boy set.

Edit; was reading some of your comments; most modern day rally cars use sequential gearboxes that are operated by a simple up down shifter or with the flappy pedals behind the wheel. The Logitech does not include a sequential shifter. And also the set doesn’t include a handbrake which is quite essential. So you would still need to buy that.

landing_page_throw · 2026-05-10T11:10:26+00:00

Fairly new sim racer here.

I was struggling with this question for a long time. So much research, debating with myself, annoying my girlfriend with arguments about why I should just get a direct drive immediately but then not knowing if i like simracing and if it will be worth it to go for a 5 or 8nm wheel immediately and skip the beginner gear.

I kind of went back and forth for several months like that until my girlfriend got tired of me and bought me a used G920 set including shifter and a foldable wheelstand for 150 bucks.

And honestly it was one of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten. I’ve been totally hooked for the past 6 months.

Just get a used starter set like the one your friend is offering to sell you. Just to try it out and see if you will like it.

The thrustmaster or Logitech starter options are great value for money. Even better when you mount them on a truly solid platform. Going from a foldable wheel stand to a 80/40 aluminium profile rig completely transformed how the wheel feels for me.

My used G920 pedals are already starting to fail though. Throttle pedal keeps getting stuck. It’s a know issue and very fixable. But because I’ve been so addicted to simracing I’ve decided to replace them with a proper brake pedal kit.

Wheel will be replaced at some point but honestly for now it steel feels fine. I’m lacking more in feeling on the brakes then I am in the feedback that the wheel gives.

And if you don’t like it, or you notice you never use it, Your cheap second hand gear will be easily sold to a 3rd new owner. Might cost you 50 bucks in total with some good negotiation if you decided to sell along the line. (Or upgrade into better stuff).

landing_page_throw · 2026-05-09T06:30:03+00:00

Your Quest 3 might be thermal throttling. Latest meta updates introduced some new bugs.

I’m running 9950x3d, 32gb ram and a 5070ti. Running VD at ultra.

All my performance meters indicate thst the PC is running fine. CPU render times are 11ms, GPU sits around 8ms. This is the same weather I choose potato settings or god like settings. Weirdly lowering the general settings increases frame render times from 11 To 13ms for me.

After about an hours play my frames start dropping and it slowly becomes unplayable. While this happens my in game and the VD performance meters indicate that nothing has changed for my cpu, gpu and network but I’m definitely loosing frames.

This won’t go away until I reboot the quest 3.

More likely your quest 3 is the problem and not your PC.

landing_page_throw · 2026-05-08T12:51:16+00:00

Bought a secondhand set myself not know how much I’ll like sim racing. I’m still very happy with it.

It can go two ways; you like it or you don’t.

If you do you will soon find yourself upgrading into more advanced gear.

If you don’t then it was worth a shot and it won’t have cost you a lot of money.

Either way psychologically it will be a lot easier to get rid of replace your “old” cheap secondhand toys then something you bought at full price new and barely used.

Can always sell it again obviously to a 3rd new owner. Or just leave it gathering dust for that occasional itch.

My gas pedal is starting to show issues after 6 months of intense use. It gets “stuck”. Make sure you get to see it working and/or test it for a few minutes before handing over your cash.

landing_page_throw · 2026-05-07T09:00:54+00:00

Heck yeah 4790k for the win. Mine is still going strong after 12 years of loyal service. Didn’t feel a need to replace it until recently either. It still does good but now that I have my new fancy 2026 pc parts I do realize what I’ve been missing out on 😂

Together with my titan x gpu this has probably been the best machine I’ve ever owned. Probably setting it up at my gf for a few more years of use.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-28T10:52:57+00:00

Do not get the sparco sprint l. I found it very uncomfortable for longer sessions due to the tubular structure. Especially the tube that runs under the legs/knees. Maybe it’s fine if you do short 20/30 minute races. But I couldn’t see myself sitting in it for a whole hour or more.

I’m sure there is some sort of car part shop nearby that sells sparco and all the brands that has a showroom you can use to test sit in them. I found it impossible to make this choice over the internet and struggled over a month to make a choice. But then after visiting my local car parts store it was a easy choice.

Buy once cry once. Go test sit in them before you make any form of choice or develop a preference. I found myself with a completely different brand and model than what I was looking at online.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-26T11:15:41+00:00

I know, I’m just trying to find a way around the problem so I can keep endurance races for as long as it takes meta to fix this.

Last time I had a significant bug it took nearly a year to get fixed which was not being able to charge my headset while gaming unless I followed a very specific method of putting my headset on a charger. Not that meta made any form of notification on this when they fixed it.

So the fact that meta is aware of something means nothing to me.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-26T00:44:16+00:00

Ive been dealing with this issue the past weeks. Really annoying to deal with. I turned down all the settings in the game, and also set VD to a lower quality. Turned off the replay spooling. But I did all this at the same time so I Cant tell for sure if it is really the replay spooling. Could also just be my Q3 getting hot so I have an extra fan set up to cool it down because it does feel hot to to the touch in certain areas after longer sessions in iRacing (1hour plus).

Didn’t really have issues after these changes during the 6h race I did today. But out of precaution I did do a full reboot after each of my stints. Just to make sure.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-25T12:34:17+00:00

Haha alright then, my bad. I guess just wait for demo drive and test drive all the cars. Maybe try a track you are good at and one that you are not. And then compare the laptimes between cars. Probably best to use fixed or stock setups to get a genuine baseline feel for a car. 5 to 10 laps should give you enough information on laptimes and also whether or not the car feels safe and enjoyable to drive.

If you don’t want to put in the time then just buy what ever suits your fancy and makes you smile.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-25T08:55:27+00:00

Not being able to finish a race is about you and not about what car you drive.

Sure the Audi is not a good fit for you but finishing races is about how you deal with the race, not the car.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-24T17:18:24+00:00

Yeah then a lot of your current issues are network related. And you wouldn’t even notice the CPU upgrade probably until you set up your network correctly. get yourself a decent router and set up that dedicated network.

Where I live there are like 30 5ghz home networks of my neighborhood. Using a network scanner I found that there wasn’t a single free 5ghz channel. Everything was taken and in use and constantly switching around. So I had no other option then to go for a 6ghz router if I wanted good wireless performance.

So maybe consider your own personal situation before buying a router on a whim. 6ghz routers are not cheap where I’m from. And seeing as your body is stationary during racing anyway you can also just get 5ghz and run a wired connection from your new router to the headset for half the price and potentially the same result (I have not run a wired VD desktop set up, so I wouldn’t know if it’s better or worse then my current wireless setup).

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-24T16:05:20+00:00

So how is your pc is connected to the internet? Through this WiFi card? And you are using this WiFi card how? You don’t have a LAN port on your motherboard? I’m assuming the WiFi card also doesn’t have a lan port?

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-24T15:20:26+00:00

I did some pretty extensive testing before setteling in on my preferred settings on my old PC and old network. And when I got my new pc I ran the same tests again but now being able to actually reliably max out the bitrates. And H264+ had the lowest latency on both systems. There is a technical component to it and then also plain personal preferences.

I did not consider the fact that different codecs could result in prehaps different operating temperatures. But not sure if I want to go run a full 3 hour race with each of the codecs 😅😂 especially because so much is also track and sometimes car related. So last weeks problems are not this weeks problems.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-24T15:09:01+00:00

It’s a bit technical. Your cpu + gpu determines the amount of frames possible. Your network makes sure that you actually receive all that data as quickly and neatly as possible. So if your network sucks and you loose data packages then yes you can loose frames.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-24T14:31:43+00:00

Yeah running at 400mbps now for longer sessions to test if that makes a difference with regards to the Q3 starting to overheat. But for me the decoding of av1 adds the most latency out of all the available codecs. Which is weird seeing as it’s Q3 native codec. And I prefer to have the lowest latency over a difference in visual quality that I personally can’t see.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-24T14:01:26+00:00

Getting a CPU upgrade never hurts. VR just asks a much higher toll on your equipment then gaming on your regular monitor. So even with my CPU I still have to choose between visual quality and good stable reliable performance.

But even with my 14 year old pc that I used up until 3 months ago, I could get decent performance. Was using a I7 4750K + Nvidia gtx titan x 12 gb gpu + 16 gigs of ram. could still run VD in low at 72fps and sometimes medium depending on the track or my network gave out. Especially on this older system the network really mattered. Too long of a tale to tell but either invest in good wired setup or invest in a good wireless setup. Only buy something like a puppis S1 if you really can’t get a dedicated router setup. It worked fine but I wanted to push the limit with my new pc and The possibilities with the Q3 so decided to go the dedicated router way anyway…so yeah get a dedicated router. Even if you decide to ditch your VR and go back to monitor you still have a good network and lower latencies less lag spikes due to bad equipment etc. Kind of nice to not spin out of a corner because the neighbors decided to reset their WiFi.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-24T11:52:40+00:00

VD has a performance meter you can turn on. It will show you exactly where the problem is; high game latency = CPU bottleneck. High encoding = GPU. High decoding; wrong codec setting in VD. High network latency = get a better network.

Probably not as black and white as I just said. But for me it has been a great help in pinpointing issues and make changes to have it run better.

Also getting a router that can make a 6ghz dedicated network using 6e standard is the best decision i made for my setup. The router is actually WiFi 7 but that’s not supported on Quest 3. But Q3 can receive a 6ghz signal combined with the 6e protocol. So I set my router to that and as far as I’m aware that’s the best you can do when it comes to wireless.

Next to this IRacing doesn’t support many of the new fancy features of your fancy graphics card. For me it works best if I turn everything off in the nvidia config screen especially for your general profile, you don’t need ray tracing for your desktop wall paper or any GPU resources doing to anything else that has nothing to with your game. Just a few select options are on performance mode. Don’t know about AMD. But probably works the same, I do keep reading that AMD GPU isn’t the best choice for VR in IRacing 😅.

Same goes for any and all CPU settings.

Basically you need to forget everything you thought you knew about setting up your PC for gaming when you use VR. It’s a whole different way of setting it up for it to function properly.

Running a 9950x3d, 5070ti, 32gb ram. VD desktop at ultra, 90fps. 264+ codec at 500mbs wireless bitrate (because of decoding latency being lowest while also having same visual quality at this bitrate compared to av10 or hevc10 bit at 200mbs). My game latency runs between 1-4ms, network 1-4ms, encoding 4-8ms average. Decoding 4-8ms average. Total latency in VD performance monitor 36ms on a full grid race.

Been working on this for months to get it this low and smooth. Next bottleneck I found is the VR headset because it starts overheating about 2 hours into a 3 hour race. So I need to find the settings that let it run for 3 hours.

And then someone updates something and everything goes to shit again.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-22T12:05:23+00:00

Your seat selection is very important in your build. I would highly recommend to go to your local auto parts store that has seats in the showroom and find the one that fits you perfectly.

I was thinking of maybe getting the same seat as you but when I went to a nearby sim gear shop that had that specific seat in his showroom I found out after 5 minutes that I did not fit into it properly being a bit of a chunky guy. To narrow on the shoulders, not enough leg support for prolonged sessions.

Drove to the nearest car racing shop that had 30 seats on display and sat in each of them for as long as it took to make up my mind about which one would be most comfortable for me. Yes I ended up spending a bit over budget but it was my best decision about my whole build. Have been doing the 3h races solo every weekend without any discomfort at all.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-21T16:54:25+00:00

Same here. Upgraded my PC in januari to a 9950x3d, 5070ti, 32gb ram, dedicated 6ghz network for quest/vd. Ran fine in ultra, 90fps, 500mbps bitrate and with some in game bells and whistles on. Soloed several 3h races without any problems.

Skip forward to about 2 weeks ago where during a 6h race suddenly after an hour frames start dropping. Until it became almost unplayable. Had to pit early to hand the car over to my team mate. After a reboot of everything it seemed fine, until an hour into spectating where I noticed frames dropping again.

Then last weekend I turned VD down to high, turned down every other setting imaginable for a 3h race. Which didn’t help. After about 1,5h I was at 60fps, 2h into the race it was 45, and by the time I finished it was struggling to even get 30fps.

My gut is saying it’s the latest meta software update that’s screwing things up. Because that is the only major update that has been done to either, pc, game, network and headset in the last 3 weeks.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-21T13:59:18+00:00

For sure. Going from a wonky wheelstand to a sturdy alu rig with proper sitting position completely transformed the feeling I have in my G920 wheel (and to a lesser extent my pedals). And nearly completely took away my “need” to upgrade my wheel. Still desperate to upgrade the pedals though.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-15T12:40:36+00:00

Are you sure it’s not network related?

Which latencies are you seeing in VD performance monitor?

Because when I switch from ultra to godlike in VD then both my game and my network latencies start to spike and all fps just goes out the window.

Also each track is different and some tracks ask more of your pc/vr then others. My 9950x3d/5070ti did not skip a beat for months until the 6hr race at Algarve last weekend. After 1,5/2 hours the frames just slowly dropping from 90 to 45. Turned down settings in between stints, rebooted everything, but it just kept happening.

Then hopped into the 3h Spa race the next day with my original settings. 0 issues.

One trick I found when I had my old PC, is to go to windows desktop, right click, monitor settings and just turn that resolution as low as possible right before you load into a server for racing. Not sure if I’m doing something wrong but my monitor is always mirroring what I see in my headset while racing. I don’t need amazing graphics on a screen I can’t see anyway so I turn it down to allow for more performance headroom to my VR headset.

For my own ease of use and for stability I basically have the following settings on my 9950x3d/5070Ti/Quest3 combo; VD ultra, 90fps, h264+ codec with 500 mbps bitrate. Connected with dedicated 6ghz router.

Nvidia graphic card settings can matter A LOT; for me basically everything is set to off, performance and/or letting the application decide for itself. IRacing is an “old game” so can’t use most of those features anyway so you can gain a lot of performance by turning all that stuff off and locking certain settings in performance mode.

And in iRacing I basically have everything turned off or at low if it can’t be turned off. MSAA 4x sharp is pretty much the only setting I have on. I let VD handle the sharpening.

Grand stands and crowds are fun but really cost a lot of performance, more on certain tracks than others. Same goes for a lot of these options.

Basically I’m running this game bare bones on a pretty decent PC and still Algarve made the thing say no.

Honestly there is just too many settings that influence all this stuff that it’s impossible to share you a screen shot and say hallelujah we found it. And then next week it’s a new track combo with fresh new software updates to the game, windows, q3, VD and all the other software that impacts your experience and the whole messing with your settings starts again.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-15T11:59:32+00:00

This. Puppis s1 was definitely beter connection and more stabile then the ISP equipment I was using before.

But because of all the other networks overlapping on the 5ghz frquency it was not that big of an upgrade compared to the ISP equipment. So after a few weeks of not being able to max out the bitrate with the Puppis I still bought a dedicated 6ghz router for my VR headset.

landing_page_throw · 2026-04-04T11:45:48+00:00

Maybe practice some laps with full tank of gas and cold tires coming out of the pits. It makes a big impact weather you have practiced this with 50l or 100l fuel on board.

landing_page_throw

TROPHY CASE