Advice sort; seeking a frugal wheel/pedal setup! or to be convinced otherwise!

Hello all.

I've just bought AC, it seems very awesome. A little background to help the advice! Presently I have no racing controllers & have not played a racing sim properly before. This is mainly due to the fact that my game time has been dominated my flight sims. Whenever i have tried a racing sim the lack of decent controller has put me off. But I love to race and feel like a break from flight sims & hence plan to get into AC.

I have NO experience in race sim hardware. Where would you suggest I start with regards to controllers. As a flight sim fan i started cheap and ended up with the best & most expensive (Logitech 3d pro > Saitek X52pro > Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS & pro flight pedals). I was thinking of spending about £100 / $150 on controllers.

What controllers would you suggest? New or 2nd hand. Personally I'd likely get a old high quality 2nd hand rather than new & cheap, but with NO experience this is just speculation.

Can some of you experienced race fans share some advice on what you think I should get. If you think a $300 controller is a must let me know! I simply won't feed the kids next month!

Thanks for any advice.

 

Dfgt is i think the best for starting out

 

Hey,

Know where you come from, sport the Warthog as well.
For $150, get a used G25/G27 set or a DFGT, that will do you good till you get convinced to buy Thrustmaster T500 or Fanatec CSW (or higher up the scale).
If you can go from $300, it's possible you could find a used T500 or maybe add $100-200 and even get a new one. As you like quality, my guess is that you'll someday end up with the higher priced wheel anyway.
I couldn't be happier with my current set, and I have yet to get a new shifter and maybe a lighter rim, and I've been through 3 sets and tried even more. I doubt that I will ever go higher, like Accuforce or maybe a future Fanatec servo wheel or whatever, but never say never

 

Thanks for the advice, but can you please give me some explanation why? just looking at it now, it only has 2 pedals, seems odd, where is the clutch?

 

I just recently switched from an XBox controller to a Logitech Momo Wheel. It made all the difference in the world in terms of fun. Get a wheel, just get a cheaper one till you get into the racing genre. It will make a huge difference in your gameplay and experience.

Edit: No clutch. You switch gears with either the paddle shifters or the gear shifter. I recommend the paddle shifters.

 

If your looking for something with a clutch pedal I would suggest a Logitech G25 or G27 probably a little higher then the price you have put might be able to find a used G25 for £100
think the G27 goes between £150 - £250 new depending where get it from.

The G25 & G27 come with the 3 pedal set the wheel which has paddle shifters attached and rotates 900° plus the H-Shifter unit there a pretty good all in one package, pretty decent FFB I have had both those wheels G25 I had for about 6 years and was still working just as good as when I bought it, I then got a G27 is a lot smoother on the FFB and generally better then the G25 IMO had that for about a year then upgraded to my current Thrustmaster T500RS wheel and TH8RS shifter which is an awesome wheel and shifter but comes with a hefty price tag my T500rs was about £380 and the TH8RS shifter was £100.

 

Very helpful thanks. Gonna search for a decent condition G25 i reckon, looks the best bang for my buck. Anyone want to sell their's that's gathering dust!

 

Here's the deal...You can get a DFGT for about a hundred dollars or so; it is a great wheel with 900 degrees of rotation, force feedback, lots of buttons, and built just about bulletproof tough. The pedals suck and as soon as possible you will want to spend a couple hundred more dollars on a set of Fanatic Elites or CSP's...for under $400 you will have a combo that will perform well enough that the only reason to upgrade later is if you just want a bigger (or even a real) wheel and hundred dollar bills are no big deal to you.

Or you can buy a G27 for around $300 and the wheel itself is marginally nicer than a dfgt and it has decent pedals..although the G27 comes with a three pedal set they are not in the same league as the Fanatic's though and sooner or later you will probably be swapping them out down the road. Same goes for the shifter that is included with the G27.

 

That sounds like an excellent route... thanks for your help, much appreciated.

 

G27 is probably all you need.

 

In my opinion the best solution for the price is T500rs. If you can don't hesitate on that. If your budget is lower then you can go to a used Fanatec GT3 RS or Dfgt or G25.

Sent from my GT-S7390 using Tapatalk

 

G25/G27 is a cheapest option to get a wheel bundled with a decent H-shifter. DFGT doesn't have it, Thrustmaster shifter is a separate product that costs about 100 pounds itself. So the choice depends on what type of cars you want to drive in the sim most.

 

G25/7 have solid wheels and pedals, just the H shifter lets it down as being little 'plasticy'. But once you're bored of it you can always sell it on to help fund a T500RS with TH8 shifter
I had a G25 for about 5 years and upgraded to the T500 a few months ago. The more I use it, the more I appreciate just how much better it is than the Logitech. If you can stretch your budget to a T500 then go for it, but I wouldn't start with anything less than a G25/7 for a good all round package.

 

Don't you offer discount codes for hardware companies such as Thrustmaster, Logitech, nVidia etc?
Could be a nice little earner for you

 

Thanks all. Its much appreciated to get advice from racing simmers.

I just need to sort the wife out...i wish my office/den was in a garden shed and not the house.. she already thinks i'm nuts with all my flight sim gear!

 

It's worth noting that the G25/7 can be a noisy bugger. My wife thought I'd bought a pneumatic drill

 

Honestly man, I have the Warthog as well, so knowing us, you like quality. You just gotta ask yourself this question and answer honestly: How much do you like sim racing?

Do you love cars like you do with planes? Cuz if you do you'll just end up with top of the line anyway. Trust me, I know how the Warthog feels and you're not going to settle for some plasticky toy and call it good.

You want clutch, and you want it to feel real, you need the Fanatec load cell pedals, end of discussion. So what wheel to go with that? The T500 is nice, the T300 is also very similar and cheaper, you won't use their pedals anway, so T300 is a good choice. The G27 actually feels very decent, the pedals are crap, doesn't matter, you bought the Fanatec load cell pedals. Or you can go with the GT3 RS V2 wheel, that's also quite good, material's great, but the FFB feel is a bit gummy. Or you can just go straight to the new Fanatec CSW V2, you're probably going to buy that eventually anyway!

You wanna keep the cost low? Get a G27 used. You won't be happy with the pedals or the shifter tho, they're very toy like, but hey, if you wanna keep to a low budget you need to compromise on some, right?

 

I hear you and agree, there is little doubt that if i love sim racing as much as i suspect i will in a couple of years time i'll have thrown £500 at a controller setup. However as i stand now, i'm very new to sim racing so am happy to get a second hand g25/7 and upgrade if it is justified. I think the G25/7 will give me the intro package that i can build from if i get the bug bad.

But thanks for your input... i'll look back at this thread in two years and go... "hmmm should have taken that advice!"