SpaceSimCentral

Is a sound card needed these days with sound on motherboards getting better and better?

As mentioned by Cody, if you have a decent sound setup, you can even hear differences in sound from a youtube video. I used this card in my media machine, with a tube amplifier, in order to play HD music. Since I am planning to use an external USB card, with ASIO support for playing music, I installed this sound card in my gaming machine!! But I have always prefered sound cards, to motherboard codecs!!

Well, it's been a long, slow crawl to this point from my last rig, but here it goes... CPU: i7-2600 -- quad 3.4ghz (lovingly donated from a scrapped workstation, works perfectly fine in this mobo, reguardless of what dell has to say about it)Motherboard: 0GDG8Y -- inspiron 620s (donated via dumpster interception)Memory: 8gb DDR3 1333 -- off brand, at least theyre paired ($30 got me the last 2 used sticks in town, max ram for this mobo has now been reached)
HDD: Lets just skip this one, nobody is jealous, no ssd hereGfx Card: Sapphire Nitro RX 460 OC -- 8gb model, factory timings ($100 but this card DOES NOT work in this mobo thanks to dell dropping support for this bios. Modified the "last" bit on the legacy vbios, corrected the checksum by modifying a bit in the padding at the end of the module. This is definatly from the "John Conner PC Repair Playbook" that will be published sometime in the futureSHOCK)Snd Card: Intel HDA -- builtin (linux utility HDAJackRetask allows me to get 5.1, cool. Getting quality audio using the default *buntu audio stack is LITERALLY impossible. Ive got openal, alsa and pulse cooperating happily and using high quality resampling (if needed) to 96k because it DOES make a big difference in final output quality)Input/Joystick: js0 = ancient saitek x52 (little twitchy on the Rz after ~ 15 years... fixed it!) js1-4 = xbox360 wireless dongle (not my input choice, but handy sometimes) js5 = logiSaitek flight yoke system, 1 throttle group (my rudder thrustmaster RudderControlSystem pedals are serial/midi and I don't have those ports anymore)I also recently purchased some 3Dconnexion SpaceBall 5000 USB 6D0F input devices I have been experimenting with. I'm happy to explain any of these weirdo hacks that were used....and it's ok to laugh, just keep in mind this system is less than $200 and saved numerous pieces of hardware from the inevitable end result of windows doing it's thing -- perfectly good stuff being thrown in the dumpster, I mean.

For $200 you can play most games created in the last 5yrs.Since your limited with your 1333mhz memory with speed I would upgrade to 16GB (2x8GB) sticks if you can manage it. Also you having a RX460 is fine, but your MB is limiting the performance. You have a PCI-E v2 port on your MB when your card supports PCI-E v3 so you are leaving some performance behind with the MB. But I guess you can't complain since you got it for free but for under $100 more you could buy more memory and a MB that supports PCI-E v3 and you would then see a nice jump in performance over what you have now.But you do have a solid 1080p performer which is fine for most gaming sessions, well done for $200.

I kept my previous configuration but last year I switched my Ryzen 1700X for a 3800X and also bought an Samsung Odyssey G7!! For the next holiday season I have my sights fixed on a Valve Index!!!

Posted by: @antonyrudik
5800x ryzen 
3070x rog strix 
ballistix 3600 mhz 
samsung evo 970 

Nice rig Antonyrudik.... if prices can go down on gfx cards I might be able to buy another rig at xmas time. How you liking the 5800x?

Finally another PC build.... its been almost 7yrs. I can play some of my steam library now on max settings
- Case: Fractal Torrent Black (one of the best airflow cases)
- CPU: Intel i7-14700k (20 cores)
- Mem: 64GB GSkill 6400mhz memory (running at 6400, may OC this) - 32GB sticks
- Be Quiet Dark Rock Pro 4 CPU Cooler / also installed a thermal plate, added some extra Be Quiet fans as well
- Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 43" 4k Monitor
- Motherboard: ASRock Z790 Nova
- PSU: Cosair RM1000e (1000w)
- HDD: 2x 2TB Western Digital SN850x NVMe black drives
- Gfx: XFX Merc310 7900XTX 24GB, this card came with its own re-enforcement bracket since this thing takes 3 slots
- OS: Windows 11Pro
Talk about a improvement over my first generation Ryzen (1800) .... this thing is a beast. I wanted my next rig to play 4k and it does that just fine and stays cool too. I am still trying to get used to the lack of noise (hahaha) my previous PC sounded like a aircraft sometimes
Still getting used to Win11, I bought this mainly because of HDR and that Win10 is like 8yrs old so I guess I need to upgrade. I wanted to put in 128GB (may still do it) but I wanted to make sure the memory ran at 6400+ and so far in testing nothing consumes the 64gb so I think I can wait on that upg for a while.
I will try to take a pic and post it

Posted by: @sscadmin
Case: Fractal Torrent Black (one of the best airflow cases)

Yep! I love my Fractal Design case!

So I picked up a second hand gaming computer and I know it's gamming computer because when you turn it on it lights up like a Christmas tree ????. So yesterday the PSU start making a humming noise, never a good sign so I decided to replace it and as I had the computer in bits I thought I would give the AIO a clean. never had one before so a bit of mystery for me.
So put it all back together and switch it on, fans went to max, check temp, 95f, panic turn it off, do it again same thing, check internet and find something about air bubbles, moved the computer around and turned it on again, same thing.
At this point I took a closer look at the block and that when I noticed a wire which I had not connected to the PSU, once that was done, it work normally.
So end result I'm buying air cooler. ????

I had water cooling for my last 2 builds, but in my most current build I went with air cooling, I think its just reliable and the Dark Rock Pro series is a quiet cooler in general (just make sure your case is a good size because its a beast haha). My son experienced some issues with liquid cooling starting to fail, took us a while to figure it out because it depended on what he was doing and how long he was doing it. Got him on some air cooler and those problems went away. 
I guess if you upgrade builds every 2-3yrs water might be a good choice, but if you plan on a 5-10yr build I would probably go AIR for the longevity factor and if you do need to replace something it will be just a fan

That what I have read about water cooler only lasting about 5 years and as this is a second hand computer, my best guess is that it's about four or five years old.
That's a good point about the size never thought about it, have order a Thermalright Phantom spirit. 

See what you mean about the size of these cooler, not going to fit it right away as I'm thinking of making some changes to the system.

Yeah if your getting a air cooler that can almost rival a water cooler they are massive You almost get scared trying to clamp it down on the processor.