Sound cards a bad idea in modern computers?

[Gamer Schnitzel]

I have a Soundblaster Z from a very long time ago and was going to build a new PC soon. I want to take the sound card and install it in the new PC but I realized that motherboards these days do not have a PCI-E slot above the GPU slot anymore. It's always under the GPU slot. This means that it will hinder airflow and the GPU will cool less effectively because of the sound card. I have checked pretty much every motherboard and I assume the reason is because they allhave M.2 slots above the GPU now.

 

Would it be better if I just used the onboard sound? I am not bothered by sound enough to increase my GPUs temperatures.

[Harrison_Cringe]

It’s not worth it. Onboard audio is good enough for most people, unless you’re wanting pro audio for high end sound gear

[CTR640]

Sound cards tend to have buzzing sounds because of some parts like GPU or other noise.

Either onboard audio or external audio. If onboard is malfunctioning, then an external gear would be a much better idea.

And another good thing about external audio is you can simply carry over to for example PC upgrade.

[Tigerleon]

58 minutes ago, Gamer Schnitzel said:

but I realized that motherboards these days do not have a PCI-E slot above the GPU slot anymore. It's always under the GPU slot. This means that it will hinder airflow and the GPU will cool less effectively because of the sound card

Haven't noticed any performance drop or extra heat with my AE-9 installed under it.

[Tigerleon]

14 minutes ago, CTR640 said:

Sound cards tend to have buzzing sounds because of some parts like GPU or other noise.

 

If you buy something really really cheap then yes. 

[H713]

13 hours ago, CTR640 said:

Sound cards tend to have buzzing sounds because of some parts like GPU or other noise.

Either onboard audio or external audio. If onboard is malfunctioning, then an external gear would be a much better idea.

And another good thing about external audio is you can simply carry over to for example PC upgrade.

Only if it's a bad design. I won't name any names, but there is a series of videos by a relatively popular tech channel that seems to have perpetuated this myth that "internal sound cards are no better than onboard audio". 

 

It's only true if you're talking about a $50 PCIe card. If you buy a $700 Lynx E22 (or its predecessor, the L22), you can expect it to be as good as any external solution, though keeping in mind that most of the nice PCIe cards don't have headphone amps.

 

Here's a more useful rule: If you want good audio performance, buy it from a company that specializes in audio rather than a company that specializes in mediocre hardware with flashy lights gaming hardware. 

[dilpickle]

I've been building PCs for 20 years now and I've never even seen a sound card with my own eyes in that time. Every motherboard has it built in.

 

I remember when sound cards were necessary in the 90s if you wanted more than bleeps and bloops from the PC speaker.

 

There is no point in them these days unless you need some specific functionality or you are an elitist audiophile.

[rice guru]

depends en tirely on use case but if you wanted one taking things externally via USB tend to be best

[CTR640]

2 hours ago, dilpickle said:

I've been building PCs for 20 years now and I've never even seen a sound card with my own eyes in that time. Every motherboard has it built in.

 

I remember when sound cards were necessary in the 90s if you wanted more than bleeps and bloops from the PC speaker.

 

There is no point in them these days unless you need some specific functionality or you are an elitist audiophile.

Even elitist audiophiles won't buy a soundcard because too much of a hassle. External is more convenient and easily moveable to other places.

[H713]

The only time I usually see PCIe based cards is where latency is a really big concern, but I rarely see internal cards these days, and there aren't all that many on the market anymore. With some exceptions, this industry pretty much runs on Macs (for good reason), so it's all moving to USB and Thunderbolt.

 

"Elitist" audiophiles (which seem to be less common than people complaining about elitist audiophiles) have never been the market for the good internal cards- they've always been sold to the studio crowd. In the past, PCI/PCIe was the only way to get a lot of IO channels with low latency. 

 

Still, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend something like a Lynx E22 (or a used L22 if you have PCI slots) to someone looking for a really good line-level sound card. I still have an L22 in one of my systems, and I have not seen anything on the market that offers a noticeable performance increase (in this price range), even 15 years after the L22 was released.

 

I don't recommend the PCI/PCIe interfaces from Asus and Creative- I've never had good experiences with them, both in terms of performance and in terms of drivers.

 

 

[Stahlmann]

On 5/1/2021 at 7:18 PM, Tigerleon said:

If you buy something really really cheap then yes. 

Even my 200€ Asus Xonar Essence STX II suffered from this. The problem existed with my 1080Ti and later on it was even worse with my 3080. Ulitmately i switched to an external solution and the issue is gone. I'll stay away from sound cards in the future.

[Stahlmann]

13 hours ago, dilpickle said:

There is no point in them these days unless you need some specific functionality or you are an elitist audiophile.

If you have nice headphones you'll need an AMP. Most onboard audio solutions don't deliver enough power to properly drive headphones with 250 Ohms or more.

 

That's the reason most people need a soundcard or anoter external DAC/AMP intead of using onboard sound.

[Entropy.]

On 5/2/2021 at 10:28 AM, dilpickle said:

I've been building PCs for 20 years now and I've never even seen a sound card with my own eyes in that time. Every motherboard has it built in.

 

I remember when sound cards were necessary in the 90s if you wanted more than bleeps and bloops from the PC speaker.

 

There is no point in them these days unless you need some specific functionality or you are an elitist audiophile.

uhhh eliteist audiophile... :kappa:

Sound cards usually don't have a place in the audiophile market, maybe if you're really pressed for space? External amps and dacs can usually sqaush them in terms of sound quality, sometimes value. Normal consumers don't need them, audiophiles/higher end consumers don't want them, lol. So basically only if you have *very* specific implications will you ever want/need one- at least as a consumer. I'm less familiar with features the card could present to certain professionals.

On 5/1/2021 at 9:18 AM, Gamer Schnitzel said:

I have a Soundblaster Z from a very long time ago and was going to build a new PC soon. I want to take the sound card and install it in the new PC but I realized that motherboards these days do not have a PCI-E slot above the GPU slot anymore. It's always under the GPU slot. This means that it will hinder airflow and the GPU will cool less effectively because of the sound card. I have checked pretty much every motherboard and I assume the reason is because they allhave M.2 slots above the GPU now.

 

Would it be better if I just used the onboard sound? I am not bothered by sound enough to increase my GPUs temperatures.

Probably not worth it. A sound card like that probably isn't going to be great, and if you're not a discerning listener, yeah you're probably not going to need or want it.