Cheap Z68 with digital out and SATAIII

Associate
Joined
12 Sep 2006
Posts
1,375
Location
Tayside
As titel really,
I have a Dell that I'm slowly but surely gutting. I don't really require a new motherboard, but my SSD is bottlenecked by SATAII and I kind of fancy using a digital out into my DAC.

By the time I look at a SPDIF sound card and a 6GBps SATA3 card I'm most of the way to a new motherboard anyway.

What is regarded as being pretty decent but cheap? Everything I look at sub-£105 is missing one or both of my criteria.
 
As titel really,
I have a Dell that I'm slowly but surely gutting. I don't really require a new motherboard, but my SSD is bottlenecked by SATAII and I kind of fancy using a digital out into my DAC.

By the time I look at a SPDIF sound card and a 6GBps SATA3 card I'm most of the way to a new motherboard anyway.

What is regarded as being pretty decent but cheap? Everything I look at sub-£105 is missing one or both of my criteria.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18340349
 
Is there a size restriction your case accepts? mATX,ATX?

Good question, I'm not sure. It's a midi tower and looks like it would take ATX but not easy to find out from the specifications.
That cheap over looks the business. Cracking saving on UD5 but just don't need the features!
 
If you're outputting through a DAC you may want a decent dedicated sound card anyway
Onboards come on a lot but to get the most through DAC you can't beat dedicated
As such sound card plus SATA 6Gb/s controller card may be better route for you
 
Input isn't necessary, do all good. The asio 4 all driver had worked well for me in the for both on board and Audigy 2 sound cards. My next area of research is asio in Windows 7.

This looks like a decent board.
 
On the pc case, one thing you need to double check is the connections for the the front panel ports and power switch, as being a Dell they may used different connections.
 
Back
Top Bottom