Sound Card

pinksoir

Hey,

I'm looking to upgrade my onboard sound as it's sheeite. The problem is i have a mATX motherboard and shuttle case and the GPU's cooler is taking up the space of the only spare PCI slot, the other one being taken up by a wireless network adapter. Now, there is a PCIE x1 slot on it, which will obviously take a PCIE sound card. The thing is, I don't want to spend a fortune. To be honest, the absolute limit would be 50 quid, and that's at a real push. So I have a few questions:

Question the first; Would it be cheaper to go the USB route? What good quality, cheap, USB sound cards would you recommend?

2) If I decided to get a PCIE card, what one, again, cheap, would you recommend? Do you know of any places that sell second hand ones (no joy on ebay/adverts as of yet)? Do any of you good people have one that is gathering dust?

C) Are there any other ways of doing this that I'm not thinking of?

Cheers.

Solitaire

mATX mobo? That won't fit in a Shuttle case - they're that goofy sATX or "SFF" (S as in Shuttle, not Small!) standard as the cases are only wide enough for mobos with two expansion slots... mATX has four.

Regardless, it depends on how much you love your sound. If you really like your sound, try doubling or tripling your budget :P If you're a mere mortal like me and can't hear the distortion of the nth harmonic etc. then try to find a cheap PCIe X-Fi. I doubt you'd be able to get a "real" sound card for under €50, much less a PCIe model And while you can hack an old SB Live! 24 or Audigy Lite to become an X-Fi Audio neither of those have a PCIe variant.

pinksoir

Floyben. Yeah, you're right. It's an mATX case. One of these - looks good, but is very short on room...

I researched and there is a PCIe wireless card option I could go for, as opposed to a sound card, and I could use my existing Audigy card. Does anyone know a bricks and mortar store that sells em? Don't fancy paying for postage on top of the price...

http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=549

Solitaire

This costs less than a fifth of its PCIe counterpart :eek:

pinksoir

This is true, my friend.

Have you had any experience of it? It sounds too good to be true. My experience of USB products is that they rarely deliver the performance they claim to be capable of.

Time for some review plundering methinks...

Thanks for the link.

Solitaire

Its really just an example - spend as much or as little as you like but ultimately given the retarded price of PCIe cards it may be much cheaper and easier to get a USB wifi adaptor. Just liked that one because it's not the kind of wifi stick you'd be ashamed of sticking out of your desktop

pinksoir

Yeah, the PCIe cards are retardedly priced.

I've never used a USB wifi stick before. How do they compare to regular old PCI? Looks like a daycent solution to my current connundrum...

Effluo

pinksoir wrote: »

I've never used a USB wifi stick before. How do they compare to regular old PCI?

My experiences of the two have suggested that there is no difference at all.
It does seem handier to me though to have a usb one just for the portability of it!

I have two similarily priced wifi adapters one pci and one usb. Even though the pci has a bit of an aerial on it it doesn't seem to make any difference to my connection which is about 80% whatever i use...

pinksoir

Hmmm. Interesting. Very interesting. Sure, I'll give it a go.