Oculus ready PC and Rift 'bundles' available for pre-order next week

Oculus Ready Pcs

Oculus has announced that the first Oculus Rift-ready PCs from Asus, Alienware, and Dell will be available for pre-order from February 16. Through a confusing use of the word 'bundle,' Oculus's blog post makes it sound like the PCs will be paired with Rift headsets and sold for surprisingly low prices. We confirmed with Oculus PR that the listed 'bundle prices' are actually what you'll pay for the PC if you also purchase a Rift headset.

The PC prices range from $950 to $2550, and will be available from Best Buy, Amazon, and the Microsoft Store. In most cases the 'bundle price' is $100 cheaper than the MSRP, meaning if you also purchase the $600 Oculus Rift (which includes the headset, sensor, remote, an Xbox One controller, EVE: Valkyrie Founder's Pack, and Lucky's Tale) you get the PC a bit cheaper.

Pre-orders will ship in limited quantities to select countries and regions from Oculus' retail partners starting in April.

As for the hardware, here are the details on the first wave of systems.

Dell's Oculus-ready system is the XPS 8900 SE. It costs $999, and includes an Intel i5-6400, an Nvidia GTX 970 GPU, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 1TB hard drive.

Asus is offering the G11CD for $949. It's got an Intel i5-6400, an Nvidia GTX 970, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and 1TB of storage.

There are also two Asus RoG options available. The $1349 G20CB has an i5-6400, a GTX 970, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. The $1599 G20CB has an i7-6700, a GTX 980, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and a 1TB HDD.

Alienware also has three options. The cheapest is the $999 X51 R3 has an Intel i5-6400, an Nvidia GTX 970, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and 1TB HDD. You can upgrade those specs to include a GTX 980, 16GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD instead for $1499.

The Area 51 is Alienware's monster, which has an Intel i7-5820K, a GTX 980, 16GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD, and a 2TB HDD. That one will set you back $2549.

If you've already pre-ordered the Oculus Rift, Oculus writes "to claim your discount, check your order status and opt into partner offers if you haven’t already. Offer codes will appear on your order status page February 16."