Sim racing is by no means an inexpensive hobby, I mean… it's simulating motorsports what did you expect. With that being said, every year, the hobby becomes more and more accessible as more companies begin to join the market, new products aimed at the masses release, and interest for sim racing increases. So, it's 2021, and here's what a budget sim racing setup might look like.

As we are keeping costs as low as possible, note I am not going to include a lot of optional, but pretty cool, sim racing accessories like buttkickers, shifters, keyboard and mouse holders, and the list could go on. I’m only including the essentials. And also, this is very important to keep in mind, the prices I am going to mention are all as if you were buying these products new and not used. On the used market, you could still follow all of the recommendations I am going to make and probably save even a few more hundred dollars. So if you have no problem buying used gear, and are willing to put up with everything that could potentially bring up, you have that option. Finally, I'm assuming you have absolutely nothing to use, and you are starting from scratch. So if you already have a monitor, a decent PC, or console that you can use, expect to spend even less money than I will mention.

For clarity, these recommendations are NOT sponsored.

Let's start with the cockpits. First things first, if you have a very very small budget and are trying to minimize your spending all cost, you don’t need a cockpit. Every piece of gear I’m going to mention can be used on desks and tables. When I first started sim racing, I played on one of those portable picnic tables. This isn’t desirable, but if you are minimizing costs, and just want to get racing, it’ll do. Before I give you my recommendation of a cockpit you could go out and buy today, making a DIY rig is also an option that is quite common. From rigs made out of all wood or just made out of PVC pipes, a quick google search of “DIY sim racing cockpits” shows everything possible and that has worked for people in the past. Considering what you will spend on materials, equipment, and the time and effort that will take, however, you might just be more interested in what I am going to recommend. In terms of very budget-friendly cockpits, I would go with the Next Level Racing GT-Lite. Coming in at $230, It looks pretty cool, holds up shifters on either the left or right-hand side, and will hold up most mass-market sim racing pedals and wheels. Most importantly, it's an entry-level cockpit that doesn’t include a center pole to hold up the wheel. Almost every budget cockpit out there uses a center pole to hold them up and I can’t express how annoying a center pole in between your legs becomes. In terms of its comfort, I’ve never owned it so I can’t comment on that, although reviews on the internet are very positive. For the price, this is an absolute bargain.

WHEEL + PEDALS

On higher-end racing sims, the wheel and pedals would be two completely separate areas of discussion, however, budget sim racing wheels and pedals almost always come together which is why I’m including them together here. If you are looking for budget sim racing wheels, you pretty much have two main options: Logitech and Thrustmaster. In terms of Logitech's offerings, you are currently looking at either the G29 or the G920. They are both pretty much the same thing, except the G29 is made for PlayStation and PC while the G920 is made for Xbox and PC. Both of these wheels are also compatible with next-gen consoles. Logitech's offerings retail at around the $250 mark making them quite a bargain. I’m not gonna get into the specifics of this wheel, however, if you are considering it and want to know more about it, I’ve made a separate, more in-depth review of the Logitech G29. On the Thrustmaster side of things, you would be looking at the T300. The T300 is a bit more expensive than Logitech's offerings but it's also regarded as a better overall wheel capable of providing higher force feedback capabilities, swappable wheel rims among other things. I’ve never tried it out so I can’t confirm, that is what I have heard from the community. Both of these wheels come with pedals included of course, and although they are certainly not even close to the best in the market, they will be more than sufficient for beginners.

Before I move on to the next section, I want to reiterate that although these are budget offerings, they are very much capable of being competitive in-game. With enough practice and technique, you will be able to compete at the highest level, and there are professional sim racers who do. They won’t however provide the most immersion, nor the most fine-tuned force feedback but those are just things you have to sacrifice when trying to save as much money as possible.

MONITORS + MONITOR STAND

Considering this is a budget build, there are two main considerations regarding the monitor. The first is whether it will be a single, an ultrawide, or a triple monitor setup. And the second is whether it will be 60 or 144hz. Ultrawide monitors are still significantly more expensive than conventional displays, and although they are more desirable for sim racing, I will not include them here. Triple monitors are out of the question as they will literally triple the price of a single monitor. Finally, 144hz monitors are also significantly more expensive than conventional 60hz ones, so I will also not include those for this budget build. For those of you who might think that 60hz will not be enough for sim racing, trust me it is. I've used both a 144 and a 60hz monitor for sim racing my current setup is composed of 60hz displays, and I have absolutely no problem with it and although 144hz displays are sharper, they are not needed nor provide much of an advantage for sim racing. Finally, the resolution will be 1080p to further save money. So, if you're in the market for a single 60hz display, the last thing to consider is the size. 24inch displays are annoyingly small for sim racing, so we won’t consider those. The three main options you have are, a 27 or 32inch monitor, or even a 40inch TV. Obviously, the larger the display the more expensive it will also be, so I’m not going to recommend any one monitor, but you could realistically expect to spend anywhere from $130 to $200 on your display. If you look hard enough, you can even find some bargains like I did when I bought some 40inch TVs for $150 each. For the sake of this blog post, the monitor will run you $150 but in real life, this could vary slightly.

As eager as you might be to get started sim racing, you can't forget how you will hold up your display. Similar to the cockpit, you don’t need a dedicated monitor holder and could use a regular tabletop or something around your house to set it on. If you do want a dedicated monitor holder, however, I would highly recommend a monitor wall mount. This will save you the most money although it will likely require you to drill some holes on the wall. Depending on the size of your display, you will spend around $15 to $40 on a wall mount. For some time, I did use one and I bought it off amazon for like $10. If you do want a dedicated freestanding monitor stand, I can’t recommend any because all of the ones I've seen online are still expensive, so unless you are willing to drop a few more hundred dollars, my main recommendation would be to make it out of wood. As stupid as that might sound, that's actually what I did for my original triple monitor mount. I refused to spend $400 on a triple monitor stand so instead, I went to my local hardware store, bought a few 2 by 2 pieces of wood, screws, and paint, and built myself a triple monitor stand that more than did the job. Ultimately, since this is a budget build, just find something to hold it up and don’t spend money on this, I'm sure you'll come up with something.

XBOX | PLAYSTATION | PC

As you would expect, this is where you will need to spend the most amount of money. Although it is 2021 and next-gen consoles have been released, if you have an Xbox One or a PlayStation 4, you can still get away with using those. However, I will be talking about the Playstation 5 and Xbox series X as well as PC of course. So the main thing to consider is whether you will be going the PC or console route. I would recommend using a PC due to the number of things you can do with it, but the new consoles are definitely capable of providing fantastic racing experiences. If you choose to go the PC route, assuming you currently have no computer to use and will be building it from scratch, I'm not super knowledgeable on PC parts, but I think its fair to say that with a $700 build you will have a PC which is more than capable of running all sim racing titles with good performance. The price will vary tremendously and you will probably be able to spend far less than even 700 dollars and still have a capable PC. Do your research here, like I said I'm not the most knowledgeable on PC parts, so 700 dollars was just a guesstimate, and at the time of this recording, graphic card prices as through the roof so I would advise waiting a few months anyway. Going the console route will limit you in terms of hardware accessibility and compatible games, but it will be a lot cheaper and still provide you with a more than sufficient sim racing platform. For the sake of this, let's just say $600 for this section, although again, this is more of a rough estimate that will likely be higher or lower depending on your situation.

GAMES!

Now that you have everything ready to go, you of course can't forget the sim racing titles. If you’re on PC and use Steam, every summer and winter sale, the most popular sim racing titles are available pretty much dirt cheap. Throughout those sales, with $5 to $30 you will be able to pick up the most popular games like ACC, Dirt Rally 2, Project Cars, and pretty much every sim racing game you hear about for crazy deals. You can also check out G2A where I've purchased games like Forza Horizon 4 for like $20 bucks, so you're not gonna spend a lot of money on games unless you buy them at full-price which I don’t recommend you do as most of these games are constantly on sale. If you're on console, I honestly have no idea how sales work there, but I'm sure you won’t have to pay full price for them if you get in on some deals. With around $60, you can pick up 3-4 popular and active sim racing titles on PC when the time is right, so that's what I'm going for in this video. This is assuming you purchase them on sale and never consider iRacing.

AND THE TOTAL IS…

And with all that, unless I'm forgetting something which I don't think I am, if you have absolutely nothing you can use and want to get into sim racing and follow the recommendations and estimates I gave on this video, the total will be exactly $1300. As I've mentioned several times already, this is an extremely rough estimate. If you take into consideration things you already have, actual cockpit or desk, taxes, platform of choice, used or new, etc etc, the total will likely be either higher or lower, although I think this is a very fair estimate of what you might expect to spend for a budget entry into sim racing when starting from scratch. Let me know what you think in the comments, does this sound about right, or am I completely off and I should just quit writing on the internet?

With all that being said, thank you all for reading, and have a fantastic rest of your day!