How to Tell if Your PC is Ready for Oculus Link & Air Link

Oculus Link and Oculus Air Link (also called Quest Link and Quest Air Link) allows you to use your Quest headset to play PC VR games, opening up a world of high quality content that you simply won’t find on the Quest Store. Here’s a breakdown of the Oculus Link and Air Link recommended system requirements and hardware specs, and what you’ll need to use Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3, or Quest Pro to play Rift and SteamVR games on your PC.

Updated – March 24th, 2024

Looking to make your Quest 3 gaming experience even better? Don’t miss our top picks for the most essential Quest 3 accessories.

Recommended PC Specs for Oculus Link & Air Link

You’ll need a reasonably powerful PC to play Rift and Steam games on Quest via Oculus Link & Air Link, though many modern gaming PCs with NVIDIA or AMD graphics cards will fit the bill. Here’s the PC hardware you’ll need for Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3, and Quest Pro to work on PC.

Oculus Link & Air Link Compatible Graphics Cards

*NVIDIA 3050 (laptop) and 3050ti GPUs are not recommended for use with Link
*Radeon RX 6500 is not recommended for use with Link

Oculus Link & Air Link CPU, RAM, USB, and Operating System Recommended System Requirements

Oculus Link vs. Air Link

What’s the difference between Oculus Link and Oculus Air Link? Oculus Link uses a cable to connect your headset directly to your PC. This will generally result in the best visual performance, and in most cases it will let your headset’s battery last significantly longer than if you use Air Link.

Oculus Air Link is the same feature as Oculus Link, except wireless. If you have an ideal network configuration, Air Link can be a great way to easily play PC games wirelessly with Quest. Without an ideal network configuration, you might have issues with Air Link (like lag or low quality visuals).

Tethered: Oculus Link Cable

Oculus Link technically works with any USB cable, including the one that comes in the box with Quest, but without a fairly long cable you won’t have much room to move around. If you’re only planning to play seated games like racing or flying sims, you can probably get by with the included cable, but you’ll probably want to buy a dedicated cable that’s long enough that you can really spread your virtual wings.

An inexpensive option is to combine this Anker 10ft USB 3.0 cable with this CableCreation 16ft USB 3.0 extender for a total of 26 feet for around $39 from Amazon.

Alternatively, Oculus sells a lighter (but much more expensive) 16ft USB 3.0 Oculus Link cable for $80, also available on Amazon.

Whether you pick a third-party USB 3.0 cable or Oculus’ own cable, both will give you the same visual experience when used with Oculus Link.

Wireless: Oculus Air Link Network Recommendations

You’ll need a properly configured network for Oculus Air Link to deliver a good wireless PC VR experience. Here’s what to do to ensure the best performance:

• PC connected to router/access-point via Ethernet cable
• Router supporting Wi-Fi 5 (also called 802.11AC) or Wi-Fi 6 / Wi-Fi 6E (also called 802.11AX)
• Headset connected to 5GHz Wi-Fi band
• Router in the same room as the headset or in line-of-sight, and at least 1m off the ground
• Don’t use a mesh network configuration (extenders, etc)