Sound card suggestions?

What do you look for? Music, movies, gaming?

Either you rearrange your PCI/PCIe cards or you have to get an external DAC.

Definitely not easy. The gaming part is the troublesome part, as all the bells and whistles are only available on Creative soundcards, and your best bet would be a X-Fi Surround 5.1 USB (non-Pro version!). It's very important that it's the regular version, as the new version drops EAX support as well as CMSS 3D. It can be had for around $60-70.

Lol. You have my suggestion, 24/96 output, analog and digital connectivity, EAX support for the tons of titles that use it, CMSS is there for those who like those virtualization gimmicks (even though I prefer regular playback), the works.

If you didn't intend on gaming, then things would be much different and other suggestions would've been made.

I've used Creative soundcards for many years, and I know the difference between playing a game that has native EAX support, with it turned on and off. It's a significant difference. And let me be clear, Asus soundcards have a laughable EAX support, not to mention how they got their shiny behinds sued for claiming EAX 5 support, when in fact they barely put out EAX 2. Lucky for them, EAX is indeed deprecated, which doesn't make the list of games any smaller. And let's not forget that high quality sound effects don't limit themselves with EAX. But I digress.

My point is that if you want to game with an external soundcard, you only have Creative to look for, the puny Asus U1 really isn't enough and their new prototype is still far away.

But you have to remember that you'll need to get an amp to power your HD598s properly.

So, exactly what games are you playing?

That is a great deal, congrats on finding it

L4D, 1 and 2, as well as all Source based games, benefit immensely from Creatives, so based on that game choice, I recommend it without thinking twice. Thing is, Creatives are really the way to go when it comes to gaming. Unfortunately you don't have a free PCIe slot, or you could get the X-Fi Titanium HD, a beauty, and the equivalent to the Asus Xonar Essence STX, only with a less harsh sound.

If you're tight on budget, you might be interested in the Fiio E5, a headphone amp that can be had for $20. That, along with the deal you found, is a very good value, real bang for buck. That would leave you comfortable enough for some time, that is until upgraditis hits you... ...and it will...

Definitely agree.

I wouldn't have guessed your comp was exactly budget, based on dual gpus and everything

Anyway, now you know that in the future, picking a motherboard with plenty of room might be a good idea.

Honestly, I think you'll get an acceptable entry level setup, even if it's on the lower end of the scale (I'm talking mainly about the amp). But don't bother yourself about that, get your gear and most importantly, enjoy the heck out of it!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snow_Fox 

Oh, I am not going to talk trash about my pc for one minute..

 

But, a "hardcore" rig would have been a lot more expensive.

 

My mobo was 130$ and could have been 300$ easy if I was going with a "higher end" build.

 

spent 150$ on a quad core 3.2 ghz cpu and could have easily spend again about 300$ on that..

 

Triple channel ram at the time would have been 200$ for 6 gigs insead of 109$ for 4.

 

While I did go ahead and xfire (some will argue its bottle necked lol).

 

I built the rig with every intention of it being overclockable (it is very much so).

 

However, I still went "bang for buck" through and through..

 

Sometimes "bang for buck" does mean spending more than you hope but, by the time I was done designing it to get signifigant performance increases I would have had to change the entire layout of the build..and to "save money" I'd have had to cut performance way more than what was acceptable. I could easily shell out 3k or more on a pc... so roughly 1,200$ for the tower isn't too bad.. and is by most people's standards "low end".

Don't even go there. Forget about what people consider high or low end. Just because some are economically more comfortable, that doesn't lessen the value of what others own and fully enjoy.

Though, I would have gone with SLI...

Anyway, I'm off, but I hope I helped you get an idea on a budget, yet performing setup.

Be well, and let me know how it works out for you.