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Hello everyone, I ran into small problem with my onboard soundcard and now I'm considering external usb soundcard, but have no experience with them. I use Hyper X cloud 2 headset which has its own soundcard but Mic on it isn't very good. So I tried my old Zalman Mic1 and it turns out that it records way worse than on my laptop and gives of lots of static noise. I used front panel since at the back panel is hooked logitech z506 5.1 speakers that takes all 3 jacks. Thus I started to wonder, if onboard soundcard messes up such simple mic, does my motherboard affect speakers as well? So now I'm considering buying soundcard. I have very large MSI r9 390 graphics card and so internal card is not an option. Soundcards that I'm considering are: Creative Sound Blaster Omni Surround 5.1 ASUS Xonar U7 MKII 7.1 Omni is way cheaper but people tend to prise xonar name more. I could hook up my speakers to both of them and maybe even use Hyper X with them instead of a dongle. If anyone who has some experience with soundcards could put me on the right track I would really appreciate that. Thanks

Another AIO desktop PC with Liquid Cooling, this time its Velocity Micro. Key features of the Raptor One All-in-One include: 34” Curved LG Ultra WQHD screen with 3440 x 1440 resolution (21:9) Integrated 80+ Gold certified power supply Full sized PCIe x16 graphics cards Asus mITX desktop motherboards Integrated liquid cooling options Thousands of possible custom configurations including 6th Generation Intel Core desktop and Xeon processors VESA mount compatible 1 year warranty with lifetime US-based technical support Here, the manufacturer of display is listed as LG. I guess it's the same in the MAINGEAR ALPHA34 and ORIGIN OMNI. For news on MAINGEAR ALPHA 34, Click here. For news on ORIGIN OMNI, Click here. They all look same. The Raptor One is fully configurable to meet the needs of even the most demanding applications with Intel® 6th Gen Core® or Intel Xeon desktop processors, M.2 solid state drives, and full sized graphics including the NVIDIA® GTX TITAN X. Oh, again it's as same as MAINGEAR ALPHA34 and ORIGIN OMNI. Digital Storm might release an AIO just like this. I guess. Source: Legit Reviews Pricing & Availability: The Raptor One will be available for order on Monday, February 1st with pricing starting at $2199 for the fully configured system.

Origin announces a new AIO PC - ORIGINI OMNI. A new 34 inch curved WQHD display. Supports Liquid Cooling. Recently MAINGEAR announced an AIO, the ALPHA 34 which has the same spec as the ORIGIN OMNI. Look for the ALPHA 34 news here: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/520344-maingear-launches-34-inch-aio-with-liquid-cooling-system-and-18-core-xeon-cpu/ ORIGIN FROSTBYTE Sealed Liquid-Cooling Supports up to up to an Intel Core i7 5960X Processor Supports up to up to an NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN X (12GB) Supports all Mini ITX Platforms (Z170 and X99) Supports up to up to 32GB DDR4 RAM Optional Custom USB Webcam with Dual Mic (Top mounted USB port) Optional Clear Window Back Cover TECHNICALLY YOU CAN PUT 2699v3 and upto FirePro W9100 or Quadro M600 here too. But they didn't mention it here. Source: Legit Reviews, ORIGIN. Video here: by CNET, a first look Pricing & Availability: Pricing Unknown and Will be available from Q1 2016.

(Didn't find a thread about this, sorry if it's a repost) Basically, it's like an Omni. However it looks pretty awesome to me. Unlike the Omni, you can jump and crouch with the virtualizer which for me was crazy I don't know about the platform though, it's basically a low friction pad that you stand on; I like the one on the omni better, however you don't seem to need any special shoes for this one, anyways take a look for yourselves. http://www.cyberith.com/index.php?menu=virtualizer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E6O_OUW8Xg

This is a review I posted on Overclock.net but I want yalls to see it. I also updated it. I am a cheap audiophile. I will use what sounds the best for the price, and I have no money so you do the math. You will never see me wearing those wooden Audio Technica headphones. At the same time, I will pay $200 for a really nice set of speakers or headphones if I can find a way to steal the money. Just to mention my set up: I have a pair of $50 Logitech speakers, a $60 pair of headphones from Audio Technica (ATH-M30), and a Turtle Beach XP 500 headset. The speakers and the heaphones use 3.5mm and the headset uses optical. My motherboard can't handle all of these devices being plugged in at once. Windows craps itself when I have 2 3.5mm devices plugged in at once. And I do not have SPDIF on my motherboard and I have been wanting to use my XP 500 headset for a while on here since I don't play console games anymore. So I had 2 choices. I could either buy an internal sound card or an external sound card. I looked at the Z series from Soundblaster and they looked nice. But the problem is that I do not know if I can physically fit anything on my motherboard because my video card heatsink almost hits the 3rd PCI-e slot. So I looked around and decided to get this. I actually didn't know Soundblaster made an external sound card until I just Googled "USB sound card." I looked at some reviews of this and decided to get it. I have heard that PCI-e sound cards sound better, but I honestly don't think my ears are so sensitive that they would be able to tell a difference. After reading some reviews, I got this and hooked that bad boy up. Specs: The front of the unit has a beamforming mic that lets you talk to people while typing, but doesn't register your typing unless you manually adjust the settings via the control panel software. The front has 3 inputs, headphones, mic, and audio in. Those take priority over the back. If you have your headphones plugged in, your speakers will go off. Then when you unplug your headphones, the speakers will come back automatically with no delay. There is obviously some hardware on the circuit board controlling that because if it were simply software controlling it through Windows, you would have to wait 20 minutes for it to register the change. On the back there is an RCA output that you plug your 3.5mm speaker connector to via an included adapter. They did this to increase connectivity options. Then on the back there are 2 3.5mm rear and center outputs as well as an optical out. And the entire thing is connected to the PC via micro USB. Onto my review. Cons: 2 small cons. First, the optical device must be selected in Windows via Playback Devices. I was actually hoping to be able to skip ever messing with Playback Devices. When you select the optical device (called SPDIF-OUT), you have to stop all sound and reload the sound. If you are on Youtube, you have to reload the video. If you are in a game, you have to restart the game. This part is obviously not the Omni's fault, but I think the included software, which is beastly in a good way, should take care of this automatically. Second gripe, The volume knob only controls the sound through Windows. I would have liked to see the volume knob control the volume through the device itself. It is like if you use the volume control on your speakers. You expect your knob to control the speakers and not the sound through Windows. This is only a problem because sometimes when I turn my PC on, it might take a few seconds for the volume control to register. but those are small complaints, now, onto the good. Pros: I will get to the sound quality in a minute, settle down. I want to start small and end big. This thing is super convenient. It is a one stop hub for all of your sound devices. All of those connectivity options I mentioned are very nice to have when you have multiple devices, and the fact that they all play nice with each other is another plus. People tend to miss these little things but I don't. I think Creative put a lot of thought into the convenience of their device. It also has rubber pads on the bottom to keep it on the desk. The beamforming mic is nice once you set it up in the control panel, which brings me to the next point. I paid $70 for this. If you were to tell me that half of the cost of this was on the software, I would be ok. This has ALMOST everything you need. I say almost, because I still use Razer's surround software for my Audio Technica M30s WHEN I'm IN A GAME! I wouldn't dare dream of using that software to listen to music. I am not the most technical guy when it comes to sound, but if you are very technical, this thing has many options in it for you. Here are some screenshots of what the control panel looks like: The control panel obviously has a few dollars worth of software in it. Now, on to the sound. This thing sounds so good. I don't have the best ears so I probably wouldn't notice a difference between a nice Realtek chip and a Soundblaster chip, but I'm not comparing the 2. I'm reviewing the single product on its own. I am not going to get into the specs and numbers, rather, I will just say that it sounds great. This song I used to test it was a song I used to listen to with my dad when I was little, and it would be a crime not to include one of my favorite songs of all time in a review of a sound product. I mean, what is this, Afghanistan? East Germany? New Jersey? No, this is America and this is what we listen to here in America! This is the Youtube video of it, I have the vinyl and the MP3 of it at my house because I'm cool. I compared the sound of the MP3 to the vinyl and it only sounded a bit crappier, not much though. With the headphones on, I am able to listen to things louder and every different sound is distinct. When I used the headphones with the on board audio, they hit the highest volume and I could not tell different drums apart in certain songs. The highest volume was too low as well. I turn the Omni on 1/4 of the way high with my speakers and I turn war tapes mode on in Battlefield 4 and I get nasty calls from my roommates, aka mom and dad, to turn it down. With my Turtle Beach XP 500, I am able to finally use these on my PC. In order to utilize these in 5.1 mode, I have to enable Dolby Digital Live in the Omni control panel and make sure the light on the XP 500 receiver is on above the D symbol (there are 2 lights, one has the Dolby symbol with PL IIx and the other one has the Dolby symbol with D following it). The PL IIx is stereo converted to 5.1 on the receiver I believe and the D is for 5.1 output from the Omni. I do not have to use Razer's surround software on this, only on the 3.5mm headphones. And that is it. This thing was well worth the money. I don't know if Realtek uses the same quality chip as Soundblaster, if it's better or worse, but who cares? I like this product better than my on board sound. Oh, and this works on your laptop too. 4 and 1/2 stars for an amazing product. Minus half a star for the volume control being through Windows and not through the device, and for the optical device needing to be selected in Playback Devices and not just on the unit. It would have been nice for there to be a small button on this near each plug for the different devices instead of having to mess with Windows sound devices.