Sound Cards

[flyer]

My Christmas present to myself will be building a new pc as mine is about 10 years old now. I think I've made all of the important choices, Ryzen 5, Gigabyte B450 Aorus motherboard, Samsung 970 Evo Plus SSD, and a Powercooler 8GB Radeon rx 580 graphics card.

I have a brilliant Asus sound card, but it uses the old pci bus which isn't on the motherboard, so I'm looking for advice on a new sound card. I don't play games, I have a decent 2.1 speaker set up and I just want the best hi fi from the card.

Any advice is welcomed and please feel free to criticise my choice of components above

 

[mexico1970]

I didn't think that audio cards are a thing now, I would have thought that onboard motherboard sound would have been good enough for most people. Ryzen 5 2600X is the sweet spot and M.2 SSD's have shot down in price now, saying that any Ryzen 5 or Samsung SSD paired with a decent graphics card will set you up for a few years depending on what you want to do.
My opinion means absolutely nothing there are contradicting views internet wide if there is one thing that i'd change is the Ryzen cooling solution to a snowman cooler (which is better than an AIO IMO) and have a two intake fan at the front and one exhaust fan at the back configuration)
But there are many views on PC parts and bottlenecking and how much RGB is too much RGB, but the basic principle is buy what you can afford and future proof any build for at least 5 years.

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

Digital (USB) sound out into an off board DAC would be my ideal solution.

 

[Centurions]

My Christmas present to myself will be building a new pc as mine is about 10 years old now. I think I've made all of the important choices, Ryzen 5, Gigabyte B450 Aorus motherboard, Samsung 970 Evo Plus SSD, and a Powercooler 8GB Radeon rx 580 graphics card.

I have a brilliant Asus sound card, but it uses the old pci bus which isn't on the motherboard, so I'm looking for advice on a new sound card. I don't play games, I have a decent 2.1 speaker set up and I just want the best hi fi from the card.

Any advice is welcomed and please feel free to criticise my choice of components above

Does your sound card not use the PCI Express x1 slot on the MB? Or is it full length maybe?

 

[Centurions]

I don't know what your expectations are or budget but there a small number of cards still out there:-

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/sound-card/#sort=price&page=1

Whether there's much difference between the onboard sound and these for stereo only I couldn't say. If you're really serious about your music then maybe the external DAC as mentioned above would be a better option.

 

[flyer]

I didn't think that audio cards are a thing now, I would have thought that onboard motherboard sound would have been good enough for most people. Ryzen 5 2600X is the sweet spot and M.2 SSD's have shot down in price now, saying that any Ryzen 5 or Samsung SSD paired with a decent graphics card will set you up for a few years depending on what you want to do.
My opinion means absolutely nothing there are contradicting views internet wide if there is one thing that i'd change is the Ryzen cooling solution to a snowman cooler (which is better than an AIO IMO) and have a two intake fan at the front and one exhaust fan at the back configuration)
But there are many views on PC parts and bottlenecking and how much RGB is too much RGB, but the basic principle is buy what you can afford and future proof any build for at least 5 years.

Cheers mexico1970. It's so long since I built a pc that I need to do a bit more reading before I make the final decisions. I'll definately look at the 2600X and the snowman cooler as recommended. It might also be an idea to test the onboard sound quality and then go for a card in the January sales if I'm not happy.

Thanks again.

 

[flyer]

Digital (USB) sound out into an off board DAC would be my ideal solution.

Cheers TMT. See my reply to mexico1970 and you'll see that I'm a bit behind the times now. I didn't know about the off board DAC although I have used them as part of my main hifi system, when I had one.

I'll definitely look up the options and prices for a DAC now that you've made me aware of them. Ta!

 

[flyer]

Does your sound card not use the PCI Express x1 slot on the MB? Or is it full length maybe?

My whole system is ancient Centurions. The processor is an AMD Phenom11 which came out in 2008 or 2009 so I probably bought one in 2010 or 2011 when the prices had settled down which gives you some idea as to the age of everything else.

I've just had a look and the pci socket is white, it's longer than the PCI Express x 1 slot but shorter than the PCI Express x 16 slot that you'd use for graphics cards.

Having a quick look on the web and I'm pretty sure the PCI socket is now obsolete, but you can buy an adapter that fits between my card and a PCI Express x 1 socket, but that prevents you screwing the card into the backplate of the pc's case and also means some cutting of the case itself which I'm not going to do.

 

[flyer]

I don't know what your expectations are or budget but there a small number of cards still out there:-

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/sound-card/#sort=price&page=1

Whether there's much difference between the onboard sound and these for stereo only I couldn't say. If you're really serious about your music then maybe the external DAC as mentioned above would be a better option.

Thanks again Centurions. If nothing else, I'll use the website to check prices from Scan which is where I've always bought components. Trying the onboard sound seems to be a good first step and then a card or a DAC if I'm not happy.

Has anybody any recommendation for a DAC if I end up going that way. From the components above you can probably see that I'm building a middle ish spec pc but as I want decent sound I'll probably pay more than a middle ish DAC would normally cost.

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

Cheers TMT. See my reply to mexico1970 and you'll see that I'm a bit behind the times now. I didn't know about the off board DAC although I have used them as part of my main hifi system, when I had one.

I'll definitely look up the options and prices for a DAC now that you've made me aware of them. Ta!

)