Upgrading Q9450 system for VR

[slippyjim]

Hi,

At work we have a "portable" PC with 3 screens built in made by a company called Acme, current spec is
Core 2 Quad Q9450 2.66GHz
4GB RAM
2 * Nvidia GTX 280 in SLI

It has been used for 3D design but now we want to upgrade it for VR use and my boss was asking about putting 2 * GTX 1080's in, but is it worth putting such good gfx cards with an old CPU, surely the CPU will bottleneck the performance? If so what is the best gfx cards that will not be bottlenecked by the CPU?

I'm thinking the best bet is to upgrade everything but not sure if we can afford that

Thanks

 

[WildCard999]

If the company can afford 2x1080's then go with a 8400/8gb+DDR4 & a GTX 1060 6gb or better as you'll be able to utilize VR with those specs. If you can reuse the case, HDD, OS, PSU and can give us a budget we might be able to suggest a better VR setup.

 

[King_V]

Yeah, that system is way too out of date to do that. The CPU and DDR2 RAM (not to mention how little of it there is) will be a problem. And this is coming from a guy who kinda likes to keep old systems going.

A new PC overall will be a relatively small portion of the total cost, given that they're going to get two 1080s.

 

[slippyjim]

Thanks, you've both confirmed what I already thought. I'll tell my boss and see how much he is willing to spend.

The one problem is there is very limited room for the CPU cooler & fan, only about 5cm height so will need a really low profile cooler. At the moment there is a very small fan that screams like hell!!!!

 

[WildCard999]

There are decent low profile fan solutions that should fit and be much quieter then the current one which is more then likely stock.

 

[slippyjim]

Thanks for that
From what I can see the current heatsink & fan is 50mm high and then there is another 7-8mm to the PSU
I found these under 50mm - https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu-cooler/#h=14,50&c=30&W=0&F=0
I've looked at the Noctua NHL9i and that supports i7 8th gen 65W TDP so can go up to the 8700.
Are any of the other heatsinks better?

Heres some pics of the current setup - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Y3DXTo5SDsvGCJu5v_aWRpjuJ_GehgwO
1 is everything out
1 is with PSU in
1 is with everything in

As you can see its pretty tight for space, the current GPU's are about 27cm but there is room for 30cm cards
Current PSU is silverstone 1000W

Will we need 2 GPU's for VR or can we make do with just 1 now, does SLI help VR that much?

Thanks for your help

 

[WildCard999]

The Noctua NHL9i would be my choice for limited space on the newer Intel CPU's. I can't see the pics as I'm on a work PC however a single GTX 10XX (1060 6gb to 1080 ti) should be enough for your VR system. I wouldn't go SLI as the support is pretty poor for games and I can't imagine that it's better for VR.

 

[slippyjim]

Thanks for that.
Whats best for VR, Ryzen or the Intel 8700?
Also for VR will a 1080 8GB be ok as that is all I can buy locally, I have read about people using 1080Ti 11GB (first I've heard of them)

 

[Sakkura]

Performance will depend on what particular VR headset you pick, but a GTX 1080 is plenty for the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows MR headsets.