Hey guys...
Need some advice on audio but before I do so let me explain how I built my current rig, if I may do so.
I originally had 3 different PC's, main, HTPC, kids and one by one sold parts and bits of them which eventually left me PC-less for a few months. Still had access to my wife's laptop so was never completely shut off from the PC world.
I help a lot of people out with their PC issues and someone needed a smaller case for their main PC system. They had a lovely original Lian Li PC60 and wanted an mATX case instead.
So I rebuilt their PC and upgraded it whilst I was at it. Instead of charging for my time I took their Lian Li case instead which they were more than happy to give me for my time. Already had an FSP 700Watt PSU from a previous build that I got cheap and a Pioneer SATA DVDRW and old Hitachi 250GB SATA II HDD lying around.
What was left? A CPU, motherboard, RAM and monitor - I guess I would have to buy some new components for this PC after all.
Got myself a 2nd hand Phenom II X2 550 that was guaranteed to unlock to all 4 cores for a few pounds off the normal retail price. No CPU cooler though but had an Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro lying around (well it was actually being kept safe in my bro's PC and he could do with a simple stock cooler on his Athlon64 3800 (2.4GHz K8 single core).
Sorted, now just needed a motherboard. From my experience the motherboard and RAM need to be picked very carefully as processors in general are pretty rock solid.
Play were selling some incredibly cheap (about half the price of the competition) Crucial DDR3 2GB sticks. Bagged two of those for some dual channel action.
Next up motherboard. Chose a refurbished ASUS M48785G EVO (DDR3 variant) initially, from a well known UK retailer known for their bad customer service. Typically the motherboard didn't work - I discovered why too. Shame the returns department at this online store didn't and sold on a dead motherboard. Seems someone had stuck Arctic Silver on the north bridge and got some on the PCB traces and managed to have slightly chipped it too. One dead motherboard and return later (which took slightly longer than it should have but the bad customer service was not so bad after all really).
So no motherboard again, found an Asrock 880G Extreme3 which had pretty much the same feature set of the 890GX chipset except the onboard GPU was clocked slightly slower. Got Crossfire support, 3x full size PCI-Express ports, 1x PCI-Express and 3 PCI slots. USB 3.0, eSATA 6Gbps and 6 SATA 3 ports with an extensive range of overclocking and tweaking options as well as VIA VT2020 onboard audio that handles Dolby Digital, DTS and WMA Pro output. Not bad....
So a new PC on the cheap, next up was the monitor. Just had sold a rather nice 24" Benq LED-LCD but realised I didn't need the 1080p output as this PC would spend most of its life connected to a monitor and a 46" Panasonic Z85 playing movies or some games. Not in the mood to buy another new monitor (I always end up selling my components after about a years of use anyway) so bought a 2nd hand DGM 22" for £30 from someone quite local to me... bonus!
So.... there you go that is my PC.
Going to add a new much larger HDD shortly and bought a 2nd hand Radeon 5770 1GB which is being sent today hopefully.
The question is ... I am outputting the sound from my PC to a Denon AVR2310 receiver would it be worth adding a dedicated soundcard to this setup or is my receiver already cleaning up and processing the sound?
What sound card would you recommend bearing in mind the above short story (the moral being that I am cheap and love a bargain but not nasty and don't compromise on quality - ahem).
So... going from an onboard VIA VT2020 compared to an Asus Xonar DG.
Specs of the VIA VT2020 on the Asrock 880G Extreme3:
7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection, DAC with 110dB dynamic range (VIA® VT2020 Audio Codec) , Premium Blu-ray audio support (means it does 24bit/192 kHz.
Have read a review of the Asus Xonar DG at Techreport and they love it - would this suffice or do I need to go for something more high end especially if I am playing and using this as a movie PC also? I plan on getting a Bluray player at some point for this machine even though I have a PS3 and play most my movies (have a Lovefilm account) on there.
Need some advice on audio but before I do so let me explain how I built my current rig, if I may do so.
I originally had 3 different PC's, main, HTPC, kids and one by one sold parts and bits of them which eventually left me PC-less for a few months. Still had access to my wife's laptop so was never completely shut off from the PC world.
I help a lot of people out with their PC issues and someone needed a smaller case for their main PC system. They had a lovely original Lian Li PC60 and wanted an mATX case instead.
So I rebuilt their PC and upgraded it whilst I was at it. Instead of charging for my time I took their Lian Li case instead which they were more than happy to give me for my time. Already had an FSP 700Watt PSU from a previous build that I got cheap and a Pioneer SATA DVDRW and old Hitachi 250GB SATA II HDD lying around.
What was left? A CPU, motherboard, RAM and monitor - I guess I would have to buy some new components for this PC after all.
Got myself a 2nd hand Phenom II X2 550 that was guaranteed to unlock to all 4 cores for a few pounds off the normal retail price. No CPU cooler though but had an Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro lying around (well it was actually being kept safe in my bro's PC and he could do with a simple stock cooler on his Athlon64 3800 (2.4GHz K8 single core).
Sorted, now just needed a motherboard. From my experience the motherboard and RAM need to be picked very carefully as processors in general are pretty rock solid.
Play were selling some incredibly cheap (about half the price of the competition) Crucial DDR3 2GB sticks. Bagged two of those for some dual channel action.
Next up motherboard. Chose a refurbished ASUS M48785G EVO (DDR3 variant) initially, from a well known UK retailer known for their bad customer service. Typically the motherboard didn't work - I discovered why too. Shame the returns department at this online store didn't and sold on a dead motherboard. Seems someone had stuck Arctic Silver on the north bridge and got some on the PCB traces and managed to have slightly chipped it too. One dead motherboard and return later (which took slightly longer than it should have but the bad customer service was not so bad after all really).
So no motherboard again, found an Asrock 880G Extreme3 which had pretty much the same feature set of the 890GX chipset except the onboard GPU was clocked slightly slower. Got Crossfire support, 3x full size PCI-Express ports, 1x PCI-Express and 3 PCI slots. USB 3.0, eSATA 6Gbps and 6 SATA 3 ports with an extensive range of overclocking and tweaking options as well as VIA VT2020 onboard audio that handles Dolby Digital, DTS and WMA Pro output. Not bad....
So a new PC on the cheap, next up was the monitor. Just had sold a rather nice 24" Benq LED-LCD but realised I didn't need the 1080p output as this PC would spend most of its life connected to a monitor and a 46" Panasonic Z85 playing movies or some games. Not in the mood to buy another new monitor (I always end up selling my components after about a years of use anyway) so bought a 2nd hand DGM 22" for £30 from someone quite local to me... bonus!
So.... there you go that is my PC.
Going to add a new much larger HDD shortly and bought a 2nd hand Radeon 5770 1GB which is being sent today hopefully.
The question is ... I am outputting the sound from my PC to a Denon AVR2310 receiver would it be worth adding a dedicated soundcard to this setup or is my receiver already cleaning up and processing the sound?
What sound card would you recommend bearing in mind the above short story (the moral being that I am cheap and love a bargain but not nasty and don't compromise on quality - ahem).
So... going from an onboard VIA VT2020 compared to an Asus Xonar DG.
Specs of the VIA VT2020 on the Asrock 880G Extreme3:
7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection, DAC with 110dB dynamic range (VIA® VT2020 Audio Codec) , Premium Blu-ray audio support (means it does 24bit/192 kHz.
Have read a review of the Asus Xonar DG at Techreport and they love it - would this suffice or do I need to go for something more high end especially if I am playing and using this as a movie PC also? I plan on getting a Bluray player at some point for this machine even though I have a PS3 and play most my movies (have a Lovefilm account) on there.
