what do you thing of new pc being built

1 i7 8700k coffee lake 3.7 gig
2 crucial ballistic sport lt 16 gig 2x8gb ddr4 3200 pc4 2560 cl16 dual channel
3 corsair hydro h101 pro240mm rgb water cooler
4 asus prime z390-a motherboard a lga 1151
5 windows 10 home edition
6 evga 2060 rtx sc ultra 8 gig with idle fan stop feature. if too hot will adj fan curve
with their tool. fan will coe on at about 50c of in idle low use or gambing.
7 Samsung 970 evo 1tb ssd primary hd
8 1 Seagate 7200 3 tb sata hard drive
9 sound blaster audgy rx pci surround sound
10 evga 850 what g 80 plus gold
11 cooler master- master case mc 500p 2 fans front 1 fan back and 2 fans on top from hydro cooler. using fans that come with case. hope that enough front fans blowing in back blowing out to hydro fans blowing out on top

12 external 4 tb usb 3.1 to back things up to
total cost 1800 micro center building it

did not want I 9700 cpu. in I 9700 reduced from 12 threads to 8 and took away hyper threading. in i9900 put back 16 threads and hyper threading back running supper hot.
 

Cisco001

Well-Known Member
I personally won't bother about water cooler, I would rather get decent air cooler and spend the money on GPU.

I won't get samsung 970 EVO. There are other nvme ssd which are better value for money.
 

briscoe

New Member
Sounds like a solid build, what are you wanting to do with it?

One question, is there a reason why you're going for a SB sound card instead of the onboard audio?
 

Cromewell

Administrator
Staff member
onboard sucks
Very much depends on what you are doing. Even the first onboard were fine if you were a web surfer. My wife games with her Ryzen 3400g onboard just fine. She's not playing a new AAA title on max or anything but it does OK for what she plays.

edit: thought this was related to graphics. For sound, onboard has been more than fine forever as well. Even AC'97 did it's job, then Azelia/Intel HD Audio came along and there's not been much point to a discrete sound card.
 

Okedokey

Well-Known Member
It's not 2003 anymore. Onboard is fine for 99.5% of everyone. If you have to ask, you don't need it.

It really depends on your use case. If you are pushing the sound into something quality, the ESS Sabre 9038 capable of 32-bit 384-kHz high-res audio DAC (for example) on some dedicated cards (e.g. Creative) make high quality sources sound amazing. Much better SNR, Never going to get that with onboard. It may be the 0.5% use case.

For John, try a modern high end card, with quality cans or speakers and you'll hear so much more than you do now with on-board.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
It really depends on your use case. If you are pushing the sound into something quality, the ESS Sabre 9038 capable of 32-bit 384-kHz high-res audio DAC (for example) on some dedicated cards (e.g. Creative) make high quality sources sound amazing. Much better SNR, Never going to get that with onboard. It may be the 0.5% use case.

For John, try a modern high end card, with quality cans or speakers and you'll hear so much more than you do now with on-board.
That's just it though. 99.5% of people don't use or even have any interest in stuff like that. Of course if you buy the best it's going to sound better. The point is that onboard audio is way better than it used to be, and for even people relatively picky about sound like me but not pushing 2K worth of audio gear, it's fine. If you want to blow thousands on audio gear go for it, but sound cards are obsolete for anything other than an upper audiophile.

Advising someone to spend more money on stuff that they likely won't use and just dumping on what they currently have is not helpful.
 

Okedokey

Well-Known Member
That's just it though. 99.5% of people don't use or even have any interest in stuff like that. Of course if you buy the best it's going to sound better. The point is that onboard audio is way better than it used to be, and for even people relatively picky about sound like me but not pushing 2K worth of audio gear, it's fine. If you want to blow thousands on audio gear go for it, but sound cards are obsolete for anything other than an upper audiophile.

Advising someone to spend more money on stuff that they likely won't use and just dumping on what they currently have is not helpful.

We dont know what is helpful, he hasnt replied. Stop projecting.
 

UnholyVision

Active Member
onboard sucks
He isn't using onboard, but PCI-E. Creative cards are not horrible, but personally overrated and can cost you for their bloated software Equalizer and maybe other attachments like the ACM in some of their models. Anything internal is bad when it fails to shield properly for EMI or it can't amp your equipment. If OP isn't using anything above 32-Ohms in cans or speakers, there isn't much use for that sound card either. Unless there is maybe one of the older Creative Soundblaster 7.1 systems that had the proprietary cables. Since Creative back in the day could get away with BS like that due to hardware acceleration and CPU's just not able to handle the load.

the ESS Sabre 9038 capable of 32-bit 384-kHz high-res audio DAC (for example) on some dedicated cards (e.g. Creative) make high quality sources sound amazing.
The problem with bit rate and sample rate is it's placebo overall and no one uses it unless editing. If you edit it's best to start with higher so when it goes lower it's not as bad. Yet as a consumer of Music, Movies, et cetera it's very rare to go past 16/24-bit or 44/48 in the sample rate. You never really use 96/192 or above in sample rates unless your DAC/Soundcard is upsampling. Upsampling doesn't improve sound either and in some systems you can get intersample peaking issues and there is some intermodulation distortion from doing this.

Honestly, what OP has is fine and will highly likely never touch 24-bit/192Khz that their PCI-E card supports. Music tends to be 44K, Movies 48K, and Games are no better at around 48K.
 

UnholyVision

Active Member
Complete nonsense. DVD is 96K, blue ray 192K.
First off you're wrong because you're mixing up bit-rate and sample rate via movies. Second, by your logic then we all should be getting the theoretical number put on paper for our computer hardware as well.

Also, you are wrong again on max bits per second because DVD can do 192khz if using Mono or Stereo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Audio#Audio_specifications

The problem is we do not tend to get these sample rates or bit-rates and in most users cases things get remixed into 2.0 since I'm sure not everyone has a surround sound system. The people putting this together a lot of times make the Stereo track really bad too. 16bits on DVD at 44.1K and Bluray/4k UHD 24bits at 44.1k

On average you get sample rates at 24Bits, bit size 16, 44.1k samplerate on Stereo 24bits, bit size 16, samplerate 48k on 5.1 DVD and 24bits, 24 bit size, samplerate 44.1k on Stereo and 96bits, 24 bit size, 48K sample rate on 5.1 sound via Bluray/4K UHD. This is if being generous to Bluray. Also if we even get a Bluray. Thanks to a lot of TV series or Movies being locked behind services like NetShaft. (Not helping their loosing money in the Billions and loosing shows. Bye bye all those possible good shows never to come to even DVD). Also, if you re-encode these raw files into a container such as MKV, MP4, or AVI just because you remix the audio into 192k bit rate or sample rate doesn't make the audio better.

Edit: A fun little chart for you as well to see that Blu-ray isn't even a set point at 192K, and that not all encodings are equal.
AudioCodecs.jpg
 
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Okedokey

Well-Known Member
Well, I don't agree, but don't have time to respond in full. Everyone to their own view I guess.
 

UnholyVision

Active Member
Well, I don't agree, but don't have time to respond in full. Everyone to their own view I guess.
Well you don't have to agree with facts and figures. You can believe you're super human by hearing over 20kHz or lower than 20Hz, keep buying magical rocks, and getting your cables cryogenically frozen for tons of money. I'm not here trying to stop you. If it's destroying your life, credit, or something else then maybe, if you're not hurting anyone, you do you. However, It doesn't make it better or that OP needs to sink thousands of dollars into what you have. Nor does it change the limitations of select codecs or make the people releasing all these pieces of media use the max output of what is basically a container in of itself.

For the record I don't disagree that highend hardware isn't nice, but amplification, upscaling, et cetera doesn't mean onboard or sound cards can't be good enough. This is coming from someone that owns tons of headphones ranging from 200 to 800USD a piece and DAC/Amps from 400 - 800. I'm an enthusiast just like I am with PC hardware owning tons of PC's from a AMD 2200g all the way up to RTX 2080 Ti cards. Yet my recommendations for everyone isn't going to be, "Buy the most expensive". Specially not in audio.
 

Okedokey

Well-Known Member
...You can believe you're super human by hearing over 20kHz or lower than 20Hz, keep buying magical rocks...

plenty of data that shows this is old information.

https://imgur.com/a/L8A2T5r

For the record I don't disagree that highend hardware isn't nice, but amplification, upscaling, et cetera doesn't mean onboard or sound cards can't be good enough. This is coming from someone that owns tons of headphones ranging from 200 to 800USD a piece and DAC/Amps from 400 - 800. I'm an enthusiast just like I am with PC hardware owning tons of PC's from a AMD 2200g all the way up to RTX 2080 Ti cards. Yet my recommendations for everyone isn't going to be, "Buy the most expensive". Specially not in audio.

with all respect, that is a fairly standard reply, missing the fact that 96k/192k are still making sense because they allow the use of cheaper analogue filters. Not all DACs do high ratio internal interpolation before sigma delta modulation. Most only do 8x or 16x, so with a 8x interpolation, 6-bit, 5th order SDM (fairly typical, similar to PCM1792A), you only get theoretical maximum SNR of 92dB at Nyquist frequency, which is not even 16-bit. Sure, many audio players and DACs have built-in sample rate converters before DAC chip, but should the user choose to disable them, they won't get maximum analog performance from 48ksps input.

24-bit is also making sense. While we don't need true 24-bit, but 18-bit~20-bit is perceivable. Some people can perceive more than 16-bits. Another reason is to allow digital volume control, which will deteriorate audio quality quickly at 16-bit. This is why many modern DACs internally process data in 32-bit format, and some high-end custom implemented DACs (like MSB) processes data internally in even floating point format. I do agree that there's no need to store music at 192k, but interpolation to 192k before sending data to DAC is still a good practice. The same is for 32-bit audio. We don't need to hear 32-bit, nor even 24-bit, but internal processing should be able to at least preserve 18-bit of data.

...and dont even get me started on out of human hearing range frequency oscillation issues with push-pull valve amps. man, the list goes on.
 
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UnholyVision

Active Member
plenty of data that shows this is old information.

https://imgur.com/a/L8A2T5r
First off I will admit my last post was a bit harsh on you. On the magical rocks and stuff. Though, nothing you just provided is proof of anything. You link me to an obscure Japanese site that has source links that go to nothing but things like this: https://jlc.jst.go.jp/DN/JALC/00272248209?type=list&lang=ja&from=J-STAGE&dispptn=1 With messages that tell you, "the users are not registered".

nihongo ga wakarimasu ka or 日本語は話せますか - Otherwise I think you would have not linked that first one.

Then you use sound/noise ratio's comparisons of Creative cards to prove DVD & Bluray is using what you say it does?

with all respect, that is a fairly standard reply, missing the fact that 96k/192k are still making sense because they allow the use of cheaper analogue filters. Not all DACs do high ratio internal interpolation before sigma delta modulation. Most only do 8x or 16x, so with a 8x interpolation, 6-bit, 5th order SDM (fairly typical, similar to PCM1792A), you only get theoretical maximum SNR of 92dB at Nyquist frequency, which is not even 16-bit. Sure, many audio players and DACs have built-in sample rate converters before DAC chip, but should the user choose to disable them, they won't get maximum analog performance from 48ksps input.

24-bit is also making sense. While we don't need true 24-bit, but 18-bit~20-bit is perceivable. Some people can perceive more than 16-bits. Another reason is to allow digital volume control, which will deteriorate audio quality quickly at 16-bit. This is why many modern DACs internally process data in 32-bit format, and some high-end custom implemented DACs (like MSB) processes data internally in even floating point format. I do agree that there's no need to store music at 192k, but interpolation to 192k before sending data to DAC is still a good practice. The same is for 32-bit audio. We don't need to hear 32-bit, nor even 24-bit, but internal processing should be able to at least preserve 18-bit of data.

...and dont even get me started on out of human hearing range frequency oscillation issues with push-pull valve amps. man, the list goes on.
First off, this has to do with my equipment how? I mean your quote was about me paying more for higher end equipment. Also, this looks almost like a copy and paste job. It seems familiar like I've read this exact same thing some where else on an audio related forum. Are you copying things and not understanding what your pasting.

One this person isn't making music and not buying an interface. The audio people are listening to isn't getting a higher bit-depth just because your equipment can go up to 32bit.
 
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