There is a fact, high-level peripherals can cost a lot of money, and building a custom PC that can run smoothly on almost any sim racing game can be very tricky, there are tones of titles out there, and choosing the right components is key for you.
You don’t want to end up buying an obsolete computer or a build with under requirements, leading to a lack of performance or even worse a frozen video, or the other way around expending too much money on “hardware” you will never use, we look for the right spot, we look for a computer that better suit your level of experience and game you are playing, all without breaking your bank account, that is the main purpose for us today.
What kind of PC do you need?
The first step in choosing the right PC is to determine what level of performance you have. If you’re just starting to play around with sim games, then any modern processor and a decent graphics card will be enough for you, but if you want to play at a competitive level, then it’s worth spending more money on building a high-end machine.
It’s important to note that when building a high-end PC, investing in components that will last as long as possible is a good practice. After all, why spend money on something that will be obsolete within a few months?
Instead, it’s worth considering how much future-proofing your budget can afford. This means buying parts that are reliable and built to last—for example, opting for an Intel Core I7-8500 or AMD Ryzen 3 2200 over something like an Intel Core i5-4430.
Another thing worth considering is the amount of RAM needed for running your sim racing game. Many people assume that 8 GB is enough. While this may be true for some games (like Counter-Strike), it won’t be enough when playing simracing at a competitive level, for example in games like Assetto Corsa Competizione, iRacing, or Project Cars.
The action of rendering a simulated environment relies on your hardware’s performance potential. If you want to see what your computer can do with these games, you need to push it to its limits. You can’t just turn everything up to max and expect things to run smoothly—you’ll need a good graphics card.
One key factor is having “upgradeable hardware, like Motherboards” means that when you do decide to upgrade some components down the line (like adding more RAM or upgrading your CPU), you won’t have any trouble doing so with ease!
Minimum requirements to run most of the Sim Racing games right now:
| Processor | Intel Core I5-8500 or AMD Ryzen 3 2200g |
| Motherboard | MSI ProSeries Intel B365 or MSI ProSeries B450M Pro |
| Ram Memory | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 or higher |
| GPU | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 or AMD Vega 64 |
| Storage | Samsung 870 EVO |
| Power Supply | Corsair RM650x |
| Case | Phanteks Eclipse G360A |
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit |
As we can see on the table above, these are recommended requirements, where most of the games should run smooth on normal graphic settings, but if we really want to take advantage of the potential of these games, we will have to upgrade the pieces to newer models that not only will deliver better results, they will also last more years than the mentioned above.
Popular Sim Racing games requirements
We can found on game official websites, the minimum requirements they demand to run their games are perfectly achieved by our setup and can go a little further, but take in consideration this setup won’t last forever, as we said before, to ensure a long-lasting gaming experience without change any components is to buy the latest on the market, so our setup will be future-proof.
iRacing for example, with our setup we could run the game smoothly without lag, here are the minimum requirements for the game:
| Processor | Intel Core I5-4430 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 |
| Ram Memory | 8 GB Ram |
| GPU | Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 or GTX 1050 AMD ATI Radeon HD 7850 or AMD RX 550 |
| Storage | 40 GB |
| OS | Windows 8.1 64-bit |
Assetto Corza is another title that definitely will pass through your head when we talk about sim racing, this simulation game need at least the following components to run:
| Processor | AMD Six-Core CPU or Intel Quad-Core CPU |
| Ram Memory | 6 GB Ram |
| GPU | AMD Radeon 290x or Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 |
| Storage | 30 GB |
| OS | Windows 7 Sp1 – 8 – 8.1 – 10 |
Project Cars 2 will be able to run on our setup as well, due to the minimum requirements are the following:
| Processor | 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5 3450 or 4.0 GHz AMD FX-8350 |
| Ram Memory | 8 GB Ram |
| GPU | Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 or equivalent |
| Storage | 50 GB |
| OS | Windows 10 64-bits |
And for those who likes the Formula racing, F1 2021 will be playable too in our setup:
| Processor | Intel Core i3 2130 or AMD FX-4300 |
| Ram Memory | 8 GB Ram |
| GPU | NVIDIA GTX 950 or AMD R9 280 |
| Storage | 80 GB |
| OS | Windows 10 64-bits |
With this list in mind, we can check that our custom build PC can achieve a good FPS quantity in these games without breaking the bank, so beside the PC to play the games we can start thinking about some peripherals for our sim racing setup and take our experience to the next level, if you are interested in some sim racing setup advice we recommend our article about the best sim racing wheels for beginners.
We really hope this guide helped you in your decision before buy your next PC not only for sim racing but for games and productivity in general, due to this setup can run lots of programs and games.