Advice on sound setup to PC

[sjp1966]

Hi All,

I currently use a gaming machine with standard, crappy PC speakers run via the onboard sound card and wanted to beef up the sound quality a bit for when I want to listen to music, be that through Spotify or via CD (yeah I have loads of those still).

I read on the "What desktop speakers are you using" thread that some people have a AV Amp connected to the PC via HDMI and a couple of speakers connected to the amp, I like the sound of that setup but the room I am in is small so was also exploring getting a sound card for the PC and attaching speakers to that soundcard.

I've a couple of questions.

1: If going the sound card route can someone recommend a decent soundcard, looking at no more than £100 ideally, and a recommendation for speakers too.

Sound card wise I saw this and wondered if anyone had any experience with it.

Speaker wise I saw these, would these ft on that sound card above?

2: If i can get an AV Amp cheap enough, does the HDMI just connect into the graphics card HDMI slot in order to make the connection?

 

[sjp1966]

What's your motherboard make & model? I think on-board audio is terrible, however try you on-board audio first you might find it ok.

Mother board is a Gigabyte Z390 UD, machine is about 3 years old now. I do like the look of those Edifier Speakers although my current soundcard (onbaord) doesnt have connections like that just the standard light green for speakers phono socket

 

[sjp1966]

I’ll admit I am not massively knowledgeable on connection types but those speakers linked don’t seem to have a built in DAC, also they (and other edifiers I’ve seen) seem to have RCA connections so I would assume with my set up (as my motherboard doesn’t have RCA) is to get a RCA to Phono conversion lead. I cannot see any here on OC but have elsewhere.

My motherboard doesn’t have anything on it mentioning SPDIF either. I am confused as how I would connect these speakers.

Aside that, what are Edifiers like? I read that they are a Chinese brand and it isn’t a country that is renowned for its quality audio (imo)