ℹ️ Click here to skip to the builds.

🛠️ Click here to skip to the tweaks.

🧠 Click here to skip to the reasoning.

"What is the best PC for VRChat? What should I buy? How do I get the most frames?"

This guide will focus on two main sections and a third support section:

Section 1: The Reasoning. This section will explain our part selection criteria. Not the specific components, but the reasoning behind our filters and choices. If you learn this, you can always build an up to date PC.

Section 2: The Builds. This section will provide three PCPartPicker builds using parametric filters, in "Good," "Better," "Best" format.

Section 3: The Tweaks. These are things you should do to your system to optimize it for VRChat usage.

isn't this just a guide on how to build a badass pc

Yes, if you already know the latest PC hardware, this is literally just a guide on how to build a big, badass gaming PC. That's all your really need for VRChat. 🤷

why does a free social game need a badass pc

First off, VRChat isn't a game, it's a platform. (also, every time I hear someone say "why does a free social game", it's usually followed by one of the dumbest takes I've ever heard)

Second off, it's because VRChat consists almost entirely of user-generated content. Take any random screenshot in VRChat, and I guarantee you that 99% to 100% of the pixels rendered on the screen at that time (unless you have your face in the menu) was created by a user.

Avatar creators -- or just "creators" -- aren't usually game developers. Creators are amateurs (non-pejorative) and tend to skip some steps in their learning and process because they are too hard, take up too much time, or are perceived as pointless. Game developers consider those skipped steps -- like optimization -- vital and core to the process all the way through.

There's also some deeper complications:

• our current avatar system utilizes Animators, a system that scales very poorly with how heavily & deeply users utilize them
• batching never happens because shaders and materials are always different
• a "very poor" might either be "slightly bad" or "war crime", and the motivation to optimize lessens when you'll be ranked "very poor" despite your best efforts
• there is a deep, inherent misunderstanding of the impact of high vertex counts on avatars
• avatar base artists tend to create and release bases that blow past the limits to start, making it much harder to optimize your end product

Assumptions

Before we begin, let's cover some basic assumptions for this guide.

1. You know how to build a PC. We're not dealing with prebuilt machines here. While prebuilts can be decent, building your own PC almost always yields better results. That being said... prebuilts aren't bad, especially with how much parts cost right now. Costco machines are sometimes half-decent.
2. You generally understand what computer parts do. You don't need to be a computer engineer, but you should know the basics about CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
3. You want a desktop. Desktops offer better cooling, rarely thermal throttle, have easy-to-find parts, and provide plenty of room for future upgrades.

Don't worry if you're unsure about assumptions 1 or 2 — YouTube has excellent PC building guides and component explanations. It's much simpler than you might think, similar to assembling a (very expensive) LEGO set.

If you frowned at item 3: ⚠️ I strongly recommend against a laptop for VR and VRChat usage. ⚠️

A laptop with "equivalent" specs will typically perform at 50-70% of the desktop's level while costing 30-50% more. It rarely, if ever, makes sense to buy a "gaming laptop".

Reasoning

This section is a bit tech-heavy. Skip it if you don't care.

CPU

VRChat runs in Unity. Unity likes faster and more consistent clocks, more threads, and more L3 cache. Unity seems to benefit disproportionately more than other engines from a large L3 cache.

Thus: prioritize boost clock, the number of physical cores on a single "unit", the ability to avoid thermal throttling, and L3 cache.

Boost Clock

Speed is good. you can't really beat more MHz. Despite all the optimizations out there, there will always exist a single thread that is "holding up" everyone else. Thus, the performance of a single thread is important, and your CPU's frequency is the primary driver of how fast that thread can finish tasks.

Physical Cores & Layout

More cores means more parallel work. Cores closer together means less latency when threads need to talk. Simple enough, right?

The wrinkle: modern CPUs aren't monolithic slabs of silicon anymore. They're modular, with multiple smaller chiplets stitched together. How those chiplets communicate matters a lot for latency-sensitive workloads like games.

AMD

AMD builds Ryzen CPUs from CCDs (Core Complex Dies) -- chiplets containing up to 8 cores each. Within a CCD, cores share L3 cache and communicate quickly.

The 9800X3D has one CCD. The 9950X3D has two. When threads need to talk across CCDs, they go through AMD's Infinity Fabric — a high-speed interconnect that's fast, but not as fast as staying on the same die. This is why the tweaks section recommends pinning VRChat to a single CCD on dual-CCD chips.

Intel

Intel's current approach uses Tiles (their version of chiplets) with a mix of P-Cores (high-performance) and E-Cores (efficiency). The idea is that P-Cores handle heavy lifting, while the E-Cores mop up background tasks.

Intel connects tiles using EMIB (embedded bridges) and Foveros (3D stacking). On paper, shorter data paths should mean lower latency than AMD's horizontal fabric.

In practice, though, AMD's massive L3 cache advantage overwhelms Intel's interconnect cleverness. Layout matters, but cache is king right now. Intel won't catch up any time soon because tooling takes years to adjust.

Thermal Throttling

This is mostly up to the CPU cooler you get and how well you install it. You'll rarely or never throttle on desktop with even a mid-range air cooler.

Thermal throttling is why laptops are terrible for VRChat and gaming in general. All laptop CPUs throttle under load.

L3 Cache

Unity's architecture involves a lot of pointer chasing. The engine constantly jumps between small, scattered chunks of memory, and each hop is a potential cache miss.

When you miss L3 and have to fetch from RAM, you're looking at ~50-100 nanoseconds of latency. If you hit L3 instead, that's ~10-20ns. That's a 5-10x difference per access, and Unity does millions of these per frame.

X3D chips stack an extra 64MB of L3 directly onto the CPU die. More cache means more of those scattered memory accesses actually hit, which means less time waiting on slow RAM. VRChat amplifies this effect because it's constantly loading unpredictable user content -- avatars, worlds, shaders -- that can't be optimized ahead of time by the engine.

In short: Unity's memory access patterns are chaotic, and a big cache means fewer cache misses.

GPU

Core clock, memory bus width, and VRAM are your priorities -- roughly in that order for VRChat specifically.

Creators: If you’re building worlds, Bakery, the "standard" for high quality light bakes, only works on nVidia.

Core Clock

Raw shader throughput. Higher clocks means more pixels pushed per second. Pretty straightforward.

Memory Bus Width

This determines how much data can flow between VRAM and the GPU cores simultaneously. A 256-bit bus can move twice the data per cycle as a 128-bit bus, a 512-bit four times teh data. When you're rendering complex scenes with dozens of unoptimized avatars, bandwidth bottlenecks hurt.

VRAM

VRAM is the memory onboard your GPU. It's used specifically for rendering, versus your system RAM, which is used for everything.

VRAM matters less than it used to because VRChat has mipmap streaming. The client dynamically loads texture detail based on distance, so you're not cramming every 4K (or 8K... stop it) texture into memory at once.

That said, more VRAM is still better. Mipmap streaming reduces the floor, not the ceiling. Busy worlds with lots of high-detail avatars nearby will still eat through memory fast. 12GB is workable, 16GB is comfortable, 24GB+ means you'll basically never think about it.

BTW, never turn off mipmaps on your avatar. You're not helping anyone, least of all yourself.

Memory

By "memory", we mean RAM. This isn't how much storage space you have, these are the RAM sticks in your PC.

In short: More is good, faster is good. Both matter.

Capacity

32GB is the minimum. VRChat will happily consume 12-16GB in busy instances. Add Windows, Discord, a browser with 47 tabs, Rekordbox and OBS -- you're flirting with swap territory real fast.

64GB is ideal if you're doing any content creation (Unity, Blender) or if you like to alt-tab into other things while chilling in VRC. It's also just nice to never think about closing applications.

Speed & Timings

DDR5 is the current standard for AM5. Target 6000 MT/s -- this hits the sweet spot for AMD's Infinity Fabric. Going higher can help, but you'll need to mess with FCLK ratios, and the gains diminish fast.

For timings, lower is better. CL30 at 6000 MT/s is solid. CL28 is great but it'll end up costing more than your GPU.

In short -- don't overthink this. Get 6000 CL30 from a reputable brand, enable XMP II, move on.

SSD

It's 2026. Don't run anything off a mechanical drive. Please. Relegate them to long-term storage and NAS usage. You're following the 3-2-1 backup rule for your Unity projects, right?

VRChat streams assets constantly -- avatars, worlds, your local cache. Mechanical drives can't keep up. You will see longer load times, stuttering when new avatars pop in, and general suffering.

NVMe PCIe 4.0 is the sweet spot for price-to-performance. Grab a PCIe 5 drive if you want bragging rights (or if you want to prepare for GTA6's 16 minute loading times)

Get at least 1TB for your boot drive. I find that 2TB is the "comfy spot" nowadays, but that's up to you.

PSU

Never, ever cheap out on your PSU.

Don’t skimp. Spend some money. Get something with good efficiency, good ratings, and from a known brand. I swear by SeaSonic.

Use this amazing spreadsheet to find the best PSU for you.

PCPartPicker will make sure you don’t select something that’s too low, but generally, with headroom at peak load:

• Your CPU will eat 150-200W
• Your GPU will eat anywhere from 200 to 650W+
• The rest of your components will sip ~50-100W

For Good and Better, 650 to 800W is fine. For Best, start at 1200W.

The Builds

Builds do not include costs for the OS.

For all builds, case selection is aesthetic. Get any ATX case. I recommend at least a mid-tower, get a full tower for ease of building.

PCPartPicker will not list an accurate total price in some cases where parts aren’t available.

🥉 Good

The Build

sigh

This build... this build is weird. Not the parts, but like... the circumstances?

You can't find the 5800X3D (or 5700X3D) right now for retail. They're sold out, they don't make them anymore. AM4 is a dead socket.

However, people want it back because AM5 chips require DDR5, which is ridiculously priced right now. Entry-level X3D PCs simply don't exist because by the time you add DDR5 into the equation and put more than 16GB into it, you're paying 600+ USD for it.

The used market prices AM4 CPUs as a scarce product rather than a last-generation CPU.

So, yeah. It's weird. Yes, this is the "good enough" build, but you'll have to step into the used market for the CPU.

🥈 Better

The Build

This build focuses more on maximizing some specs (like VRAM and L3 cache) that are vital for high performance in VRChat without hitting the top line too hard.

This build centers around the AM5 socket 7800X3D. It focuses on increasing available VRAM to 16GB, getting higher quality RAM with better timings, and ensuring parts overall do not bottleneck unnecessarily.

If you can get your hands on it, the Radeon 9070 XT is an excellent contender for this build. It has ample RAM at 16GB, and in certain configurations outperforms the 5080 — which is wild at it’s price point.

Good luck getting one, though.

🥇 Best

The Build

This build completely ignores cost as a factor, and focuses on the top-of-the-line components available to maximize your frames in VRChat. Each part has been hand selected or has very tight parametric filters.

CPU

This build centers around the AM5 socket 9850X3D. It gets about a 7-8% lift over the 9800X3D thanks to an improved boost core clock. Watch Linus yap about it here.

It was selected over the 9950X3D due to a lack of availability for the 9950X3D, and trusted benchmarkers noting that the 9950X3D’s use case is limited to those who game and also perform content creation (video editing). Benchmarks indicate that the performance gain of the 9950X3D over the 9800X3D is less than 3% in most cases, which is within error bars.

As far as the 9850 vs the 9950X3D? My assumption is that the 9850 beats it in gaming applications due to the higher core clock.

However, the 9950X3D may also be useful for those that find themselves heavily multi-tasking. If you run a lot of things in addition to VRChat, you can shove noncritical processes to the second CCD while allowing VRChat to run exclusively on the first.

The 9950X3D will also be useful if you create content for VRChat, such as worlds or avatars.

GPU

Obtaining a 5090 at anything even remotely close to MSRP is never going to happen. You can buy it, but you'll be shelling out 3000+ USD. (ask me how i know)

As such, if you make this build, do your best to get a GPU that maximizes specs per the reasoning section of this page. This means your candidate list looks like this:

1. nVidia 5090
2. nVidia 4090
3. AMD 7900XTX

All of these GPUs have 24GB or more VRAM, high core clocks, and excellent raster performance.

Honorable Mentions:

nVidia 3090 - Not bad, but small memory bus means you lose more perf than you might expect. AMD 9070XT - You lose out on VRAM and core clock, but it's far more affordable and findable.

The Tweaks

There’s a few things you should do in order to maximize performance.

7950 / 9950X3D Note

If you’re running these CPUs, you have an extra CCD to contend with. You do not want processes to talk "across" this CCD gap -- you will incur latency & thus lose frames.

VRChat handles this automagically. If you want to be super sure, --affinity=FFFF locks VRChat to the first 16 logical cores. Look at our docs for more information on that command.

If you want to min-max: Look into using Process Lasso to shove things onto the second CCD so they don’t take up CPU time that VRChat could be using instead. Candidates include:

• Browser
• Discord
• VRCX
• XSOverlay / OVR Toolkit, other overlays
• OBS

Don’t put Steam or SteamVR onto the second CCD. Processes inherit their parents’ CPU sets & limitations unless overridden manually. Plus, that may affect other non-VRChat games.

AMD Ryzen Master

Mixed feedback.

My own experience was pretty painful — it got “out of sync” with my BIOS settings. It resulted in some terrible CPU issues, like VRChat being locked to a single core.

If you use Ryzen Master, use it exclusively. Do not adjust settings in the BIOS. If you get “out of sync”, reapply the same tunings in RM that you did in the BIOS.

I have read that RM has serious issues with dual-boot systems, so if you’re doing that, do NOT use RM.

BIOS Settings

1. Enable XMP and ensure your memory is running at the proper speed.
   1. Don’t forget this step.
   2. Try XMP II first, then fall back to XMP I if you encounter instability.
2. Consider overclocking the CPU.
   1. The 9800X3D overclocks cleanly, and even with a half-decent air cooler rarely breaks 70C.
   2. Even just the basic 200MHz boost via PBO can get you a good amount of headwind.
   3. Look into undervolting via PBO, too.
3. I can't recommend overclocking your memory. Don't do it.
4. Make sure Resizable BAR is on.

Windows 11

Never use upgrade installs. Avoid installing too much extra crap.

Make sure you’re up to date. That’s it.

If you’re nitpicky, you might want to run Win11Debloat, but this won’t do too much.

In typical Microsoft fashion, a recent Windows update has killed performance. nVidia confirms it here.

Kill it by running the following command in Command Prompt or Powershell, then restart your PC.

wusa.exe /uninstall /KB:5074109

You may have to do this multiple times if the little bastard reinstalls itself.

GPU Drivers

nVidia

Use NVCleanstall. This is critical — do not simply install over older versions.

I prefer to use the latest Studio version for better stability.

AMD

Keep drivers up to date.

Nothing as well known or well-used like NVCleanstall exists for AMD, but I did find this, so idk, give it a shot if you really want to

Connecting your Headset

I personally strongly prefer direct-to-GPU tethered headsets (Beyond, Index, etc) because you do not need to worry about battery life, network latency, bandwidth, compression, color space squashing, etc.

However, new headsets such as the Steam Frame make wireless VR very compelling. Weight is coming down, comfort is going up, and we're escaping the bonds of Meta. Finally.

Either way, if you are using wireless either out of necessity or because you prefer it, there's a few vital things you should do.

Ensure you have a high-quality, dedicated WiFi 6 network for your headset. I’ve done this in the past by using a second router in Access Point (AP) mode, connecting my ethernet to it, then connecting another ethernet to my PC.

Then, in the AP settings, create a new WiFi network with a new SSID dedicated to the headset. Connect your headset to it. That way, your headset gets internet through the AP, connects to your PC directly without having to transit through your router, and doesn't have to fight other traffic on your network.

If you’ve got a well set-up network with 2.5GB+ ethernet to your PC and good quality WiFi APs (Ubiquiti U7 Pros are overkill but they’re so nice), you might be able to pull this off on your base network -- but even with a high-end setup like this, you'll potentially run into network congestion issues.

This won't apply if you have/get a Steam Frame, you get the dongle and the HMD has a dedicated WiFi radio just for that dongle. They've got some pretty smart folks over there at Valve, huh?

Use Steam Link or Virtual Desktop.

They’re both great. Steam Link has some advantages, VD has others.

If you have eye tracking, both Steam Link and Virtual Desktop can use foveated encoding (not rendering) to lower the bandwidth requirements and reduce encoding load.

Steam Link is built into SteamVR, free, and Just Works™. It requires very little tweaking. It's gonna get lots of nice new updates now that the Frame is on the way.

Virtual Desktop does a lot of cool tricks to maximize quality. It’s very configurable and tweakable. You can use the spare CPU on your Quest headset to sharpen the image, potentially improving image quality. The VD dev is super active, reactive to feedback, and very helpful. 25 bucks is nothing compared to the value his work delivers, pay the man.

Both Steam Link and Virtual Desktop work with VRCFT, if you’ve got a Quest Pro or another eye/face tracking wireless HMD.

Do not use Quest Link, unless you have no other choice.

It hasn’t gotten meaningful updates in years. The quality isn’t great, it isn’t configurable at all, and you have to do some shenanigans to turn off Asynchronous Timewarp (and you really, really should).

… but, if wireless isn’t an option, and all you have is a Quest, then wired Quest Link might be your only choice.

I've heard that ALVR supports Quest over a USB cable, but I have zero experience with it.

VRChat, SteamVR, etc Settings

Go follow EchoTheNeko’s guide. It’s good.

In particular:

TURN OFF MOTION SMOOTHING. You should essentially never use motion smoothing. Not only does it look bad, it has few (if any) benefits.

Turn off AA in VRChat if you’re using a high-resolution headset (Bigscreen Beyond).

Consider running at lower supersampling resolutions. I usually run at 100% these days!

⚠️ Make sure SteamVR Motion Smoothing is OFF.

Despite being intended as a motion sickness preventative, it often causes motion sickness and disrupts your visuals in a serious way, making your screen look plain broken.

Oculus does this too in Quest Link. It’s called ASW and it’s a pain to turn off. Why are you using Quest Link??????

I don’t know why companies still think this is a good way to prevent motion sickness...