HP buddies up with HTC to build virtual reality gaming PCs

The hardcore virtual reality headsets are on the verge of release, and everyone is freaking out over whether their PCs will be able to handle the strain, even VentureBeat’s Jordan Novet.

Now, you don’t have to be a hardcore gaming rig builder, however, to have a machine that specializes in running virtual reality. You just have to be a Hewlett Packard customer.

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Hewlett Packard is building a virtual reality-centric gaming machine titled the HP Envy Phoenix, which will be available January 16th with a starting price point of $1,700.

Hewlett Packard is designing the HP Envy Phoenix to specifically take advantage of HTC’s Vive headsets. Part of this design revolves around tweaking graphic cards to give the best performance possible during a virtual reality experience.

Vice president of HTC, Dan O’Brien, explains more on their collaboration with HP, “HTC and HP are collaborating to test and optimize hardware to ensure a great customer experience when using HP technology with Vive by HTC.

By testing against the most intensive games on the market, HP and HTC are pushing hardware to the limits to enable constant frame rates for smooth and glitch-free virtual gaming experiences.”

The HP Envy Phoenix will ship with a 2 terabyte hard drive, and the customer’s choice of Intel i7 K-series processors (no word on which specific models). Customers will also need to choose between two graphics processing solutions: the AMD Radeon R9 390X or the NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti.