Need advice for my new build in August

Vidar · 10 Jun 2016 at 18:55

I've never bothered with anything other than onboard sound and currently using some ancient Creative 2.1 speakers that I've considered absolutely superb albeit bulky.

Hopefully come August I will finally have enough money to build a brand new system and I'm wondering if it's worth investing in a soundcard and if so which one?

Also what speakers would you recommend?

rids57 · 10 Jun 2016 at 21:54

What will you be using it for mostly? Reason I ask is that the answer will be different for gaming or music.

Vidar · 10 Jun 2016 at 23:29

I mostly game, use it for watching movies and listening to music etc

rids57 · 11 Jun 2016 at 00:07

Do you use headphones, speakers or both?

and what is your budget?

Vidar · 11 Jun 2016 at 01:04

Mostly speakers these days, I do have a set of usb headphones but they hardly see use anymore...

My overall build budget is locked at 5K top whack if things come through for me in July as planned but that's for everything, monitor, peripherals etc etc and am hoping to come in well under that and haven't really decided which chipset I'm going with etc.

rids57 · 11 Jun 2016 at 02:39

Probably worth looking at the upcoming Acoustic Energy Aego 3.

It's a very high quality 2.1 system which costs a good bit (£200) but you can feed it with an optical cable, so it would remove the need for a good sound card. You would have to either ensure that the motherboard you will be using has optical out or just get a cheap Asus DGX and just use it's optical out.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/accoustic-energy-aego-2.1-speaker-system-sp-024-ae.html

mingey · 13 Jun 2016 at 12:55

It gets addictive ... fast, I was in a similar position to yourself, 3 months later, I now have a SoundBlaster X7, XM7 speakers, DT990 and DT770 headphones, and continually eyeing more up lol.