[Cityscapego]

Hi guys,
 
I created this thread for the two reasons in the title:
 
Firstly, I'm worried I will be underpowered for the ST which I'm getting in about a week. I have a 450W power supply. Am running a p7p55d asus motherboard, 2 1tb HDs, an old 8600gfx card and an i7 (not sandybridge) 2.88ghz processor. Will I be underpowered? How could I possibly make sure? If so, I will have to invest in a bigger power supply. What would you reccomend?
 
Secondly, I'm worried abotu what I've read in the following links. I am running Windows7 Ultimate 64bit and I've read that there is a likely chance of having occasional (from a week gap to a month) of extremely loud screeches which can damage not only the headphones (ATH M50's) but my ears too apparently. Has anyone had this problem on a 64bit OS? How long have you owned one without this happening? Am I just being paranoid? If it is a major problem I'm thinking of partitioning a section of my HD to load windowsXP 32bit on where I will make my music and, if the problem is a real issue, listen to music. Is this an ok solution? Do you have any better ideas?
 
Link 1: http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&id=20090222084608127&board_id=21&model=Xonar%20Essence%20STX&page=3&count=55
 
Link 2: http://www.head-fi.org/t/494565/xonar-essense-stx-random-loud-high-pitched-ringing-noise
 
Sorry for the detailed questions guys, I realize this isn't a computer forum but I thought I would give it a go.
 
PS: I didn't see any threads on these two topics, but If I missed one please link me.
 
Thanks for all the help recently Head-Fi.
Much appreciated.

 

[ZorgDK]

I think I've had that high noise happen to me with the ST and Foobar2K. I think It's a problem with either wasapi or asio that can occur if there's other sounds playing than the audio player . If you want to be sure to avoid it, you should stick to ds (direct sound) output on your audio player. AFAIR the noise wasn't that high on my system though.
 

 

[rroseperry]

It's not clear whether you'll be installing this yourself or having someone else do it. The ST should let you know if the power supply is inadequate. At least it did when I was waiting for a tech to do the install.

 

[MikeW]

This is the wrong forum all together for those questions. But, sound cards are trivial and use very little power. Probably about 20 watts or less. Your PSU will not even feel it.

 

[rroseperry]

This is the wrong forum all together for those questions. But, sound cards are trivial and use very little power. Probably about 20 watts or less. Your PSU will not even feel it.

Actually it isn't trivial. The Xonar may require more power than the pc's orginal hookup can provide. It did in my case.

Not to say that all sound cards need it, for sure. But there are exceptions.

 

[Cityscapego]

Quote:

I think I've had that high noise happen to me with the ST and Foobar2K. I think It's a problem with either wasapi or asio that can occur if there's other sounds playing than the audio player . If you want to be sure to avoid it, you should stick to ds (direct sound) output on your audio player. AFAIR the noise wasn't that high on my system though.
 

I'm hesitant to move from wasapi to direct sound - won't that result in a loss of audio quality (most importantly 24bit)? Or am I just misinformed? Either way, it's good to know that the sound, at least for you, wasn't over the top and potentially damaging.

 
Quote:

It's not clear whether you'll be installing this yourself or having someone else do it. The ST should let you know if the power supply is inadequate. At least it did when I was waiting for a tech to do the install.

What would you recommend given that you witnissed the installation? Is it hard enough to warrant help? I'm reasonably tech savvy - set up most my pc equipment myself. Thanks, I'll put it in and see if it works (much the simplest solution to my question). Also, I saw that the sound card bypasses the pci slot for power to keep it stable/clean - does the card come with the right cables/apparatus to connect directly to the psu or will I have to go out and find/buy some things?

 
Quote:

This is the wrong forum all together for those questions. But, sound cards are trivial and use very little power. Probably about 20 watts or less. Your PSU will not even feel it.

 
 
Which forum should this be in? Ok well, we will just have to see how this goes - although, that is quite encouraging.

 
Quote:

Actually it isn't trivial. The Xonar may require more power than the pc's orginal hookup can provide. It did in my case.
Not to say that all sound cards need it, for sure. But there are exceptions.

 
If you don't mind me asking, what was you're original power supply? More or less than 450w?

 

[rroseperry]

My original power supply was 300W, which wasn't adequate.

I think it comes with everything you need, but since I had someone install it for me, I can't say with absolute certainty. It didn't take long, though there was some trouble shooting to be done, new power source, getting the drivers up, and checking the output.

 

[Cityscapego]

Ok maybe my 450w will be enough, thanks for that.
 
If it doesn't I'm sure I can get the right cables relatively painlessly. What power supply are you running now just outta interest?
 

 

[Griffinhart]

Hrmhphmghrghm... Joyeuse's specs, copypaste from my profile:

ASUS P6X58D Premium Motherboard
Intel Core i7-930 CPU (2.8GHz) (4 physical, 4 virtual cores) with Zalman CNPS9900 Heatsink
6x4GB G.SKILL Ripjaw Series (1600MHz DDR3) RAM
XFX ATI Radeon HD5850 GPU
ASUS Xonar Essence ST Sound Card
Corsair 750TX PSU
2x2TB, 7200RPM Hitachi Deskstar HDD

(Those are all the important inside bits that would put a meaningful draw on her PSU.)

Mostly I run in DirectSound (I don't really do a lot of active listening these days), and haven't noticed any differences in quality when I switch to WASAPI. Of course, most of my music is 16-bit (and, in fact, most of my 24-bit stuff is the soundtracks for the Touhou Project games, so it's a lot of synth stuff).
 
-- Griffinhart

 

[MattTCG]

That's a weak psu for your hardware and specs. Can you get away with it? Sorta. Just because a pc will run on an inferior psu doesn't mean that it should. And just because a psu is rated at a higher power spec doesn't mean that it is any better either. I have seen Corsair 620w psu out perform 800-900w psu's easily. Good clean power is what you're after...particularly when it comes to getting good sound from your pc, not to mentions effectively powering your computer. 
 
Corsair is my favorite brand right now but there are other good manufacturers out there. The long and short of it is this: don't skimp on powering your computer. I have a Corsair 750hx currently. Using windows 7x64 with no scretching to go along with my stx...

 

[PurpleAngel]

Tigerdirect has a Ultra 750 watt power supply for $44.99, after $30 mail in rebate.
Best deal I could find on the web.

 

[MikeW]

@ rroseperryIf changing your soundcard causes power supply related issues, then the PSU was quite marginal to begin with, and would probably fail before long anyways. Sounds like you had the cheapest crap power supply made. 20$ no name special.
 
most systems don't draw 450 watt. PSU recommendations as a whole are typically vastly over-speced.
 
Corsair is good, Seasonic X is better. Probably the best.
 
Edit: References, as I suspected, under 20 watts.
 
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14500/5
 

 
yes, it's a Xonar, but it also has a "Separate" power plug, which actually has nothing to do with demanding/needing more power, as it does with GPU's, it's simply there for a "cleaner" source of power, instead of mobo slot. It should not be significantly different for the ST.
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151088