Advise on headphones and setup please?

HD558 and HD598 use the same driver I believe and I'm not sure but there's a foam mod that can be done on the HD558 to make it sound like the HD598.

You'll get more bang for your buck with the HD558. Both headphones have decent levels of bass (I auditioned them once).

I don't know about onboard sound or online stores, sorry.

My knowledge is more on the computer side for building and OC. Personally I wouldn't bother with the Asus Maximus V or any of the mobo's marketed towards overclockers as they tend to not offer much more than some of the more budget friendly ones for the premium you pay. What you need is a good quality mobo with the specs you want and keep in mind that even if your crossfire/sli you won't lose much performance if any if you end up running them at 8x speed compared to 16x, there are a lot of benchmarks confirming this, even on older pci-e slots. So you can save a decent chunk of money there. This is especially true for your budget, a good budget board will be necessary for your price range to get the most out of your money as that Maximus V is eating up a good chunk of it without offering any real performance benefits.

 

When you decide to build your computer I recomend heading on over to Tomshardware and posting under the appropriate section, you end up with a lot of people who will be peer editing your build and offering different builds/suggestions. And finding a lot of good deals you may have missed. In general the best way to go about it in my opinion.

 

Also too my understanding majority of the onboard sound options are inferior to a lot of the dedicated cards, and with high end headphones you may be able to tell the difference, so take the money you just saved and put it towards that. The computer audio section of the forum is good for this part if you don't get help here in that catorgory. They can probably clarify better than what I can on whats the best route to go for the computer audio.

 

*Edited in*

Just reread and saw where you live, people on toms are generally located in the US and won't be able to help too much on the finding deals part. But can probably help a lot on recomending things and peer editing it still.

Edited by boomhaur - 7/20/12 at 8:38am

Sennheiser HD558

Asus Xonar DG sound card.

Bah! Price does not equal performance!

And the HD 598 are not "hard to drive" at that - they're sensitive and easily handled by basically anything with a headphone jack. Apart from the Senns, the AKG K701 (or its kin) are good suggestions, as is the Sennheiser HD 600, and Kenwood KH-K1000 (these are closed, but offer more bass than anything else mentioned - fairly similar flavor to the Sennheisers though, good imaging for gaming). None of these (save for the HD 600) are really hard for a soundcard to drive, and with the HD 600 just make sure whatever card you get specifies that it can handle their moderately higher impedance (at 300 ohms).

Some very good recommendations, and just to note both the SupremeFX and ThunderFX are crap.

 

if you want good synergy, and good soundstage for gaming, with nice comfort, then I would say AKG K242HD or AKG K240mkII and an ASUS Xonar Essence ST soundcard. I would recommend the THS4032opamps, but don't know if you are comfortable with that, its pretty much drop in and go for it.

 

Those AKGs I mentioned punch way above there current price, and work very well with the ASUS. 

How about getting a dac/amp instead of a soundcard? 

A possibility, but it all depends on budget. the ASUS + AKG combo comes in at $300, try do that with a dedicated external DAC (thats better then the ASUS) + amp (thats musical and has the clarity needed, and is not bright). You are going to search for a while and most probably end up at $700. And then that is without any of the dolby stuff, which TBA is not an issue in RTS, but can be in FPS

The Asus Xonar DG (& DGX) sound card can easily drive headphones up to 150-Ohms, it will technically drive 250-Ohm, but just barely.

Other wise the Xonar Essence STX & ST and the Asus Phoebus come with headphone amplifiers, rated up to 600-Ohm.

The Creative Titanium HD does not come with a true headphone amplifier, but still does a fairly decent job of driving headphones. up to around 250-Ohms.

 

As the HD598s are only 50-Ohm, they can work with just about anything with a headphone jack.

The only negative is that they only come standard with the 1/4" (6.35mm) jack.

The HD558 & HD598 use the same driver.

You could save a few dollars by going with the HD558s and removing the black rubber tape from inside the HD558s cups.

It will not match the HD598, more like a sound somewhere between the HD558s and HD598.

 

Amazon sometimes will have a great price on used HD558s.

A friend of mine compared it with my STX, he said its crap too, and this was with the AKG K242HD.