[averagenoob]

I have been going through a lot of asus and creative sb cards and at this point i am beyond confused. Before i had creative x-fi elite pro but i recently upgraded my system which has no conventional pci slot. I only have pciex1 and pcie16 slots now
 
Currently i am with onboard realtek ALC892 which is making my ears bleed.
 
I have some sony extreme bass earplugs and sony z1000 headphones. 
 
What i want is a card that delivers good sound quality with extreme bass and sound quality in general for music. i dont want those fancy external boxes and daughter IO consoles, I also want it to have good driver compatibility with windows 8.1 x64
 
Will i be able to get what i want within $200? Please suggest

 

[PurpleAngel]

  I have been going through a lot of Asus and creative sb cards and at this point i am beyond confused. Before i had creative x-fi elite pro but i recently upgraded my system which has no conventional pci slot. I only have pciex1 and pcie16 slots now
Currently i am with on-board realtek ALC892 which is making my ears bleed.
I have some sony extreme bass earplugs and sony z1000 headphones. 
What i want is a card that delivers good sound quality with extreme bass and sound quality in general for music. i dont want those fancy external boxes and daughter IO consoles, I also want it to have good driver compatibility with windows 8.1 x64
Will i be able to get what i want within $200? Please suggest

 
Asus Xonar DX (PCI-E) sound card (used, $40-$60) and plug into it a FiiO E11K headphone amplifier ($60).
So for around $100 to $120, you get some nice sound from your computer and a headphone amplifier that can work with more then just the computer sound card.
Get the Unified Xonar Drivers, they are more updated, then the Asus drivers.

 

[cel4145]

Asus Xonar DX (PCI-E) sound card (used, $40-$60) and plug into it a FiiO E11K headphone amplifier ($60).
So for around $100 to $120, you get some nice sound from your computer and a headphone amplifier that can work with more then just the computer sound card.
Get the Unified Xonar Drivers, they are more updated, then the Asus drivers.

+1

This is a great setup for the money. The E11K has built in bass boost, too