If you have around $500 and you want a wheel, a set of pedals, and an H-pattern shifter that you won’t be replacing in six months, buy the Moza R3 bundle and add the Moza HGP shifter. That gets you a direct drive base, a wheel, two pedals, and a proper gated shifter for roughly the price of a mid-range graphics card. It is the only one of the three combos here where the wheel base is not the weak link.

If you are on a PlayStation, that advice is useless to you, and the answer becomes the Thrustmaster T248 with the TH8S shifter. And if you specifically want the cheapest possible path to an H-pattern for drifting or old touring cars in Assetto Corsa, the Logitech G923 plus the Driving Force Shifter is still fine. Not exciting. Fine. I will explain why the order goes Moza, then Thrustmaster, then Logitech, because most listicles rank them the other way around and I think those lists are written by people who have not clamped any of this to a desk.

What “budget” actually means here

I am capping the full combo at about $550. Below that, you are shopping in a very specific bracket: gear-driven or hybrid belt bases from the two old brands, or the smallest direct drive units from the Chinese newcomers. Pedals in this bracket use springs or rubber stacks, not load cells, with one exception I’ll get to. Shifters are plastic-bodied and use a plastic gate with either magnets or springs for the detents.

Every one of these setups clamps to a desk. None of them ship with a cockpit, and I will keep hammering on that because the desk is the part everyone ignores until their first fast lap at Spa.

Prices move around constantly, so treat everything below as “around” figures from the last few months of watching them.

Combo 3: Logitech G923 + Driving Force Shifter (around $350 to $420 total)

The G923 has been around since 2020 and it is essentially the G29 with a slightly better brake spring and a marketing feature called TrueForce. The base is gear-driven with two helical gears, and the output is somewhere around 2.2 Nm at the rim. Logitech does not publish a torque figure, which tells you something.

Unboxing is painless. The wheel comes with the pedals attached by a cable, the clamp is a big plastic screw knob, and you can be driving inside fifteen minutes. On PC you need G HUB, which has improved but still occasionally forgets the wheel exists after a Windows update. Set rotation to 900 for road cars and knock it down to 540 for GT3, and turn “centering spring” to zero in G HUB or every sim will feel like it is fighting you.

The thing you notice after a week is the notchiness. Gear drive has backlash, and you feel it as a small clunk when the force reverses direction, which happens constantly through a chicane. The Mazda MX-5 Cup car at Lime Rock in iRacing is where it shows up most, because that car lives on tiny corrections. You learn to drive through it. You never stop feeling it.

TrueForce is real but it is narrow. It takes audio and engine data from supported games (ACC, GT7, iRacing, a handful of others) and vibrates the rim. In ACC it does give you a nice rumble over the Spa curbs and some engine tone under braking. It does not fix the missing detail from the gears. Set TrueForce to around 30 to 50% in G HUB; at 100% it just buzzes like a phone on a table.

The pedals are the honest weak point. Three pedals, the brake has a progressive spring with a rubber stopper at the end, and the throttle is light and long. The brake is better than the old G29 because you can actually lean on it, but consistency is poor compared to even the cheapest load cell. Trail braking is guesswork until you build muscle memory. People on r/simracing do a $10 mod with a squash ball or a foam block behind the brake pedal, and it does help. That is not a compliment to the stock spring.

The Driving Force Shifter is the same unit Logitech has sold since the G27 era, and it is around $50 to $60 for a reason. The gate is soft, the throw is long, and the detent feel is closer to a joystick than a gearbox. Reverse is a push-down-and-right motion that you will hit by accident twice a session for the first month. Modders sell replacement springs and 3D-printed gate inserts, and a $15 spring swap turns it from mushy to acceptable. The stock 6-speed pattern is fine for a Miata or an old BMW in Assetto Corsa. It is not fine for a heel-toe rhythm in the Lotus 49, because the throw is so long you lose time on every shift.

One thing the G923 does well: it just works on PS5 and Xbox, depending on which version you buy. Check that box carefully, because the PlayStation version does not work on Xbox and vice versa. Both work on PC.

Who this is for: console players who want a shifter and cannot go over $400, or anyone who plans to upgrade the base within a year and wants a shifter and pedals that will still plug in. They won’t, actually. The pedals and shifter use Logitech’s proprietary plugs, so when you move to a direct drive base later you need an adapter. This is the main reason I rank the whole combo third.

Combo 2: Thrustmaster T248 + TH8S (around $400 to $450 total)

The T248 is a hybrid: a belt system with gears inside, which Thrustmaster markets as 3.5 Nm. It is not 3.5 Nm at the rim in any way you can feel. Call it about 2.5 to 3, and it is smoother than the G923 because the belt absorbs the worst of the gear backlash. That alone makes it a better base for GT racing.

There is a small LCD on the wheel that shows gear, telemetry, and the FFB mode. It looks like something from a 2012 concept car. It works, and in iRacing you can glance at your gear without HUD clutter. Ignore the marketing about it. The wheel itself has magnetic paddles that feel better than the Logitech’s plastic ones, and the rim is a 28 cm leather-ish wrap that is a bit small for road cars but fine for GT3.

The base has three FFB presets you toggle from the wheel itself: FFB1, FFB2, and FFB3. Use FFB1 for almost everything. FFB2 and FFB3 add a boost that mostly clips and heats the motor. In iRacing set wheel force to around 3 Nm in the app, disable “linear” only if you want the boosted low-end detail, and set the sim’s strength so the force meter barely clips under braking. In ACC, gain at 70 to 75%, dynamic damping around 100, road effects 10, and leave the rest at zero.

Now the pedals. The T3PM set uses magnetic (Hall effect) sensors on all three pedals, which means they do not wear out like potentiometers, and the brake has a small conical rubber insert with four pressure settings. Setting 3 is where most people settle. This is a real advantage over the G923 pedals: the brake has a definite end-stop feel and it is more repeatable, and the throttle is heavier. Still not a load cell. Still not close to one. But if you are learning trail braking on the T3PM you will develop consistency faster than on the Logitech set.

The base has a fan that kicks in after 20 minutes and it is audible over headphones at moderate volume. Thrustmaster owners have argued about this on the forums for years. It does not bother me. It bothers a lot of people.

The TH8S is the shifter that makes this combo work. It is the cut-down version of the well-regarded TH8A, around $90 to $100, with a plastic body instead of metal but the same H-pattern-plus-sequential switchable plate. The gates are firm, the throw is short, and it clacks loudly enough that your family will ask about it. On PC it plugs in over USB directly, so it is not locked to the Thrustmaster base. On PS5 it connects through the base with the included cable and Gran Turismo 7 picks it up without configuration. Driving the Toyota GR86 around Tsukuba in GT7 with the TH8S, you actually want to shift, which I could not say about the Logitech unit.

Complaints that surface after a month: the TH8S clamp is a single screw and it walks under aggressive shifts, so add a rubber pad. The sequential mode is fine but the paddle-style throw is long. And the T248 base itself has a habit of clunking through center after the belt loosens a little; Thrustmaster support has replaced units under warranty, but the process is slow.

This combo is the correct answer for anyone on PlayStation, full stop. You cannot buy a direct drive base with a shifter for PS5 at this price. On PC, keep reading.

Combo 1: Moza R3 bundle + HGP shifter (around $500 to $550 total)

The R3 is a direct drive base rated at 3.9 Nm, and yes, that is less than double the G923 on paper. On the rim the difference is not about peak force. It is about the fact that there are no gears, no belt, and no backlash. The motor sits directly behind the wheel. When the rear of an LMDh car steps out at Arnage in Le Mans Ultimate, you feel the moment it starts, not the moment the gears catch up.

The bundle ships with the ES wheel (a 28 cm round rim with a decent rubber grip and clicky buttons) and the SR-P Lite pedals, which are a two-pedal set with a spring throttle and a spring brake. That is the bundle’s obvious hole: no clutch pedal out of the box. For a shifter combo, that matters. You have two choices. Moza sells a clutch add-on for the SR-P Lite, or you buy the full SR-P three-pedal set for around $150 more and get a load cell brake in the deal. If your budget stretches, do that. A load cell brake is the single biggest consistency upgrade in sim racing, and it changes how you drive in a way that another 5 Nm of torque never will.

Setup is more involved than the other two. Pit House, Moza’s software, is a big application with a lot of sliders and it will feel intimidating for the first hour. Firmware updates are frequent, which is good, and occasionally break Xbox compatibility for a week, which is not. Once it is running, the settings I’d start with: max torque 100%, FFB strength 80%, speed-dependent damping at 20%, natural inertia at 100, and “wheel spring strength” at 0. In iRacing set the wheel force to 3.9 Nm and let the sim auto-scale. In ACC, gain at 85%, road effects 0, and the “min force” slider at 0 because direct drive does not need it.

Now the desk problem. The R3 comes with a table clamp and it holds well on a heavy desk. On a light or hollow-core desk, 3.9 Nm is enough to make the whole surface twist, and you will feel the desk flex as a sort of rubbery delay in the FFB. This is not a Moza flaw. It is physics. If you own a cheap desk, either bolt the base to a wheel stand (around $100 to $150) or accept that some of your FFB is going into the furniture. The G923 and T248 do not have this problem as badly because they cannot generate enough force to move the desk.

The Moza HGP is an H-pattern shifter around $120 to $130, plugging in via USB on PC. It has a metal shaft, a 7-position gate (6 plus reverse), and detents that are firmer and more clearly defined than the Logitech unit and close to the TH8S in feel. The throw is medium and the knob is a bit lightweight. Some people on the Moza Discord swap in a heavier weighted knob. It does not have a sequential mode, so if you want that you would look at the Moza SGP, which is a separate product. The HGP is quieter than the TH8S, which is a real advantage if you race late.

The Moza ecosystem question comes up constantly: Moza is a newer brand, and people worry about long-term support. In practice they have been shipping product for several years now, the warranty process is faster than Thrustmaster’s from what I have seen on the forums, and the software has been updated steadily. Fanatec’s CSL DD is the obvious alternative in this bracket at 5 Nm, but the Fanatec base alone costs what the whole Moza bundle does, and Fanatec’s shipping and support reputation over the past couple of years has been rough. I would not gamble on that for a budget build.

The catch, again: no PlayStation. The R3 works on PC and Xbox only. The HGP does not have Xbox support at time of writing, so the shifter part of this combo is really a PC combo.

One table, because prices are the whole argument

What I would not do

I would not buy the G923 on PC in 2026 unless it is heavily discounted. The used market is full of G29s and G923s at $150 to $200 because everyone who bought one upgraded within a year. A new one at $400 is a bad deal; a used one at $170 with the shifter thrown in is a good starter kit. Buy accordingly.

I would also not buy any of these with a shifter first if you mostly race GT3 in ACC or iRacing. Every car in those series uses paddles. The shifter money is better spent on the load cell pedal upgrade. Get the shifter later when you actually start driving cars with a clutch pedal.

FAQ

Is a direct drive wheel worth it for a beginner?

Yes, if you can afford the R3 bundle and you have a solid desk or a stand. The old advice that beginners should learn on a gear-driven wheel was invented by people who bought gear-driven wheels. Detail in the FFB makes you faster sooner, because you can feel what the tires are doing instead of guessing from the sound.

Do I need a clutch pedal for an H-pattern shifter?

Most sims let you set an auto-clutch so the shifter works without one, and GT7 does this by default. It feels wrong. If the point of the shifter is the driving sensation, a clutch pedal is half of it. This is why the two-pedal Moza bundle is annoying for this specific use.

Will the G923 shifter work with a Thrustmaster or Moza base?

Not directly. Logitech uses a proprietary plug. There are USB adapters from third parties that run around $30 and they work well enough, but by then you should just buy the TH8S or HGP.

Before you order

Buy the Moza R3 bundle and HGP if you race on PC, you have a desk that does not wobble when you lean on it, and you can add the clutch pedal or the full SR-P set now or within a few months. Buy the T248 and TH8S if you are on PlayStation, or on PC with a flimsy desk and no plan to get a stand. Buy the G923 and Driving Force Shifter only used, or only if it is the console version you need and it is on sale under $300.

Before you click the button, check three things. Confirm the console version matches your console, because the boxes look identical. Measure your desk thickness against the clamp range, since the Moza clamp maxes out around 5 cm. And count your pedals: if the bundle has two and the shifter is the reason you are buying, price the clutch in from the start rather than discovering it on the first night.