Haswell Boards Without Realtek

mxoagentjohnson · 10 Apr 2016 at 00:09

Is there any Haswell boards that dont use Realtek for anything? Especially Audio.

I am looking to make a enthusiast build early next year with Haswell, the new 10 core chip and pascal (If both are out by then) and want to have 8x 16gb Ram sticks. But i absolutely despise Realtek and their bad drivers, so if anyone knows a good motherboard that doesn't use it i would love to know! Preferably Asus but any is fine.

stulid · 10 Apr 2016 at 00:12

Gigabyte Z97 sniper?

Has creative sound and qualcom killer NIC.

Edit, you mean Haswell-E and not just plain old Haswell which then turned into Devils canyon.?

these X99 are Creative and Qualcomm NIC,

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5281#ov
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5126#ov

mxoagentjohnson · 10 Apr 2016 at 00:21

stulid said:
Gigabyte Z97 sniper?

Has creative sound and qualcom killer NIC.

Edit, you mean Haswell-E and not just plain old Haswell which then turned into Devils canyon.?

these X99 are Creative and Qualcomm NIC,

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5281#ov
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5126#ov

Yea sorry meant Haswell-E, shoulda been a bit more specific.

Thanks for linking these! I just god honestly hate realtek as i've had so many problems in the past and dont really want to add a sound card to the build when all i use are USB Headphones.

Bluecube · 10 Apr 2016 at 08:17

If you just use USB headphones then it doesn't matter what the sound chip is. USB sound output bypasses any onboard chip.

Rroff · 10 Apr 2016 at 08:30

Usually you can disable the onboard codec in the BIOS which should mask it from Windows entirely. If you are using another USB audio device it should work independently of the soundcard/onboard and infact in that scenario disabling the onboard can reduce problems.

mxoagentjohnson · 10 Apr 2016 at 16:04

I've always had issues with Realtek even disabling it in the Bios the drivers always made their way onto my system in some windows updates (Windows 10 dislikes me for some reason)

So would you recommend i just get a cheapy soundcard or use my USB Headphones and disable realtek? I would prefer to have an all Asus build (Well, mobo and gpu) and the rest (Ram, PSU, Water Cooler) would all be corsair.

Bluecube · 10 Apr 2016 at 16:57

Disable the sound and just use your headphones. If you need a soundcard then I'd suggest a USB soundcard.

ZXSpectrum · 11 Apr 2016 at 16:07

Don't a lot of the Creative cards come with Realtek chipset now? I am pretty sure the cheaper ones are as I installed a Creative SB Audigy FX card recently (New model) and it was a realtek chipset! then I installed the drivers and it changed to SB Audigy in the device manager.

Get a board with an Intel Nic and disable the onboard audio and get a PCIe card.