Recommendation for new Oculus compatible machine help
Hey all. My old computer is fine, but the Oculus software has recently pushed an update where it no longer starts up, attempting to repair the software uninstalled it, and the install errors out despite clearing out the install cache and existing files while running it in network capable Safe mode with Defender off as recommended.
Eventually I narrowed it down to this error. https://forums.oculusvr.com/community/discussion/71083/cant-install-software-exiting-with-code-18 and since I'm using an old HP xw8400 build with two Xeon 5355 processors, it does kind of check out that this latest update finally became incompatible with my processor and it may be time to upgrade anyway. To my knowledge, there isn't really a way to get a more modern processor onto the motherboard, and I'm not going to rage at Oculus for not supporting hardware they were never supporting in the first place. (Auto Update and being unable to downgrade is meh, but I'm not going to win that fight.)
So what would you guys recommended for a new processor/ram/motherboard combination? My Graphics Card (RX480) and hard drive is still fine, and I'd like to keep it on the cheap for as much as we can do with VR.
Typically the graphics card is the bottleneck for VR, so I would say just get any reasonably powerful CPU. In my case I use an i5-4460, but I imagine something less powerful would work as well. It looks like the issue there is some sort of software issue, not a performance or bottleneck issue. So the solution would be to just purchase whatever CPU is easily available, cheap, and Oculus software compatible.
I don't know what your budget and other use cases for this machine are. Since you're coming from a dual xeon workstation, I'm going to assume you use your computer for 3d rendering / archviz / video editing/ compiling/VMs or something similar. I'm going to assume 3d rendering, but this should apply for all the aforementioned use cases. I will be using these benchmarks: https://www.cgdirector.com/vray-benchmark/
Budget - I would get a Ryzen 7 2700x + board and fast ram (wait for a sale on each reddit.com/r/buildapcsales) you'll still have 8 cores and higher performance than your current setup, they're pretty good for rendering, will outperform your current GPU in vray.
Workstation - Threadripper 1950x + board and fast ram. I've seen threadripper 1950x's on sale this week for $405 (they're currently $550 on amazon). The boards for these are pretty expensive ($300) but I've seen them on sale for as low as $150. /r/buildapcsales is your friend. These 16 core processors easily outperform the rtx 2080ti in vray and are only somewhat slower than dual gtx 1080tis.
Hybrid rendering is faster than just gpu or cpu. Please lookup benchmarks for the software you intend to use and compare processors. I'm just assuming you mainly have a graphics heavy workload, but I believe both recommendations still stand for any of the mentioned use cases.
If your main use is driving games, the Xeons were never the best suited CPU anyway. You can grab pretty much any modern CPU+motherboard, really. The recommended CPU requirement for VR is the i5-4790 from 2014, so any Intel or AMD CPU from this generation or last generation would be cost effective and more powerful than your Xeon X5355 for VR. At this point, it's all about how much you want to spend.