New build, hardware pron inside

[Don Pellegrino]

ASUS P8Z77-V LE
Intel 3770K @4.0 for now, will push it more tomorrow
4x4Gb Mushkin 2133Mhz (faster than that was too expensive), CAS10 @1.5V
Noctua NH-U12P SE2
Intel X25-M G2 160Gb (2 years old, but still very fast, not worth upgrading)
Western Digital Black 1Tb
EVGA GTX670 (not installed yet)
Corsair 300R
Corsair HX850 (850W, modular)
ASUS VS248 IPS 24" x2
Das Keyboard Ultimate Silent (old school mecanical switches, no labels on the keys, it's ALL black, so those who need to look at the keys when typing are fucked . Despite having silent in the name it's still very loud, but that's how I like it.)
Steelseries Ikari

The GTX670 hasn't been delivered yet, but the integrated HD4000 runs most of the games I play at the highest quality settings no sweat so that's no big deal. The Corsair 300R is awesome, the trays for the HDDs/SSDs and the DVD bays are very well done, the interior is all black and most importantly it's badass without looking like a xXxg4m3r-4-LyF3xXx kind of case (and full tower cases are for socially deficient people~). You know that "Starting Windows" animation when Windows 7 boots? It lasts ~1.5 seconds and it doesn't have time to complete. That's how fast it boots. The keyboard is just amazing, it's making me want to type all the time.







Old setup:


New setup:

[Fuggin]

Good job...now get ultramon and use your laptop as a 3rd auxiliary screen.

[Zekk Pacus]

All that beautiful kit and USB audio....

Nice build though, nice and clean.

[hXc]

ummm... why PSU is upside down? Does the case have any intake holes on the bottom for the psu?

[Don Pellegrino]

I'll probably buy a decent sound card and good speakers later, but this USB headset is surprisingly good.
I'm pretty sure the PSU is not upside down and no, there's no opening under the case.

[hXc]

Usually you want the psu to draw air from the outside and pump it outside too, in order to lower the temperature inside it

[Zekk Pacus]

There is an intake vent at the bottom of the 300R for PSUs, but it depends on where you're locating the case. Like on that carpet it's not going to be drawing a lot of air in, better to have it drawing from the inside of the case.

[Frug]

What was the final cost in CAD Don?

PS i like the case

[Fuggin]

I'll probably buy a decent sound card and good speakers later, but this USB headset is surprisingly good.
I'm pretty sure the PSU is not upside down and no, there's no opening under the case.

Unless you are a hipster audiophile, onboard audio is good enough these days.

Speakers, on the other hand, Corsair SP2500 imo.

[Zekk Pacus]

$250 speakers running off a $3.50 output chip....real balanced system.

Would you run your 27" IPS monitor off a GT520? No, you wouldn't. Why have such an unbalanced audio system? It makes no sense to me. A $50 soundcard such as the ASUS Xonar DX sounds a billion times better than onboard audio.

[Fuggin]

$250 speakers running off a $3.50 output chip....real balanced system.

Would you run your 27" IPS monitor off a GT520? No, you wouldn't. Why have such an unbalanced audio system? It makes no sense to me. A $50 soundcard such as the ASUS Xonar DX sounds a billion times better than onboard audio.

hipster spotted. I bet you raise your cables of the ground with wood stands and use $1,200 HDMI cables too.

[Waagaa]

Gold cables make for much prettier 1s and 0s! Gold is so worth it!

[Sparq]

BUT THEY'RE GOLD PLATED

[EntroX]

hardly porn when there's only like 5 pictures tho~

[Bombcrater]

Unless you are a hipster audiophile, onboard audio is good enough these days.

I understand modern hearing aids are quite good and not too ugly. Your doctor will be able to advise further.

[Zekk Pacus]

$50 soundcard....totally suggesting you buy 1200 dollar cables.

I don't quite see how hipster = audiophile all of a sudden. Nor did I ever suggest I was either of these things.

If you can tell the difference, a cheap soundcard performs far better than your onboard sound will. If you can't, fine, but then you probably shouldn't be buying $250 speakers.

[Daneel Trevize]

$250 speakers running off a $3.50 output chip....real balanced system.

Implying 250g and 3.5g of mass-produced electronics can't ever be similarly valued per g while of comparable quality.

[Frug]

$250 speakers running off a $3.50 output chip....real balanced system.

Implying 250g and 3.5g of mass-produced electronics can't ever be similarly valued per g while of comparable quality.

He's not implying that. He's saying that isn't the case with sound cards. Specifically he's saying that the realtec one we all have is not on par with a card.

OR are you saying that your $250 speakers are of low quality and match perfectly with a $3.50 chip?

tbqh I'm not sure if I'd notice a difference or not, but I haven't touched a sound card in like 10 years.

[Daneel Trevize]

I'm saying the price of the speakers has minimal relation to the price of the chip running them, being as they're completely different physical things in different stages of technological development and mass production.

This isn't the '90s/'00s, why can't the chips in billions of PCs and other electronic devices been made with sufficent economies of scale as to be good quality and cheap, while shit with magnets and this week's favoured aesthetic surroundings be somewhat expensive/poor value for money? Especially when things like RAM simply aren't made at inefficient 'small' sized unlike just a few years ago - Try buy a 4MB piece of new RAM now, and one doesn't expect to not be laughed at, but yet also one expects modern onboard sound chips to have not improved in decades, especially w.r.t. handling digital signals?

[Bombcrater]

The digital part of computer audio is a problem that was solved completely way back when the HDAudio spec came out; all a 'sound chip' is these days is a basic DMA engine that takes in audio data and feeds it to some DACs - a seperate DAC chip in the case of sound cards, a built-in one for on-board sound. Or even an external one if you're using SPDIF or HDMI output.

If you look at the sound chips being used on sound cards today, even high-end stuff, they tend to be fairly basic and mature designs. Asus' Xonar cards use a re-badged version of the C-Media Oxygen HD chip that's 6 years old. It does the job perfectly, there's just no need to design something new.

It's the analog part of the system where on-board sound falls down. Analog audio circuits are hugely sensitive, they're hard to do right on a sound card. But on a mobo with an audio component budget of about $1, masses of RF interference from the rest of the board, and maybe 1-inch square of space available, quality is inevitably going to be compromised. The trade-offs required don't change, so on-board sound has reached a certain level of quality and can't really go any further.