Sound Card

[Rawrasaurus]

I'm going to be buying a new CPU cooler and 2x2GB RAM tomorrow to upgrade my PC. However, I was thinking, I might get a sound card at the same time, then I don't have to worry about upgrading my PC for a while.

A few questions
- When I plug in certain headphones (such as turtle beaches and dre beats) they both produce an annoying buzzing noise. However, this is not the case when I use them on the xbox/my ipod respectively. Am I right in saying this is a sound card issue? If so, will fitting a new one solve the problem?
- What exactly will an improved sound card do? Increase the potential audio quality?
- What kind of card will I be able to get, preferably in the £20-30 GBP region, from www.ebuyer.com is it even worth getting a new one with that budget?

P.S My motherboard is an Asus P7H55-M, I believe it has on-board sound.

 

[Noodles :)]

Have you tried both the front & back ports for the headphones? And can you try speakers in those ports to see if it's the same problem?

Soundcards aren't usually worth it tbh, they take a tiny bit of load off the CPU and do give better audio quality in most cases, but it's up to you to see if it's worth it. I would personally say it isn't worth it.

 

[Rawrasaurus]

I knew either you or Kill Dank would post! :love:

I will try both front and back now, thanks for the suggestion, will report back shortly..

 

[Noodles :)]

Heh. ;D
Someones gotta help Sytheians with there computers.
Okay, if the onboard is screwed, might aswell buy a soundcard. But it could just be the headphones

 

[Rawrasaurus]

Heh, I'm usually fine fixing my own problems (usually succeed) but recently I've been entering fields I know next to nothing about... (such as audio..)

Anyway, I tried out the headphones again in the front and back ports and the buzzing seems to have faded, it's still noticeable, but when other audio is playing I can no longer hear it.

So, with Dre beats, do you think the sound quality will have a noticeable difference if I buy a fairly low end sound card? I'm unsure.. CPU load isn't much of a problem, I have an i5 750.

 

[Noodles :)]

I'm not a big expert with sound either, I know a bit about it.
Ahk, and idk about the Dre beats, never used them. I'd personally save the cash for another upgrade of some sort. But really it's up to you. I'm sure there would be an increase is sound quality, but the increase but not be huge.

 

[Rawrasaurus]

Another random question, how do you suggest I further upgrade my PC? Except for video card.

Intel i5 750
4GB DDR3 1333mhz RAM (Upgrading to 8GB soon)
ATI Radeon HD 4670
500GB Western Digital 7200rpm HDD
60GB Corsair SSD

I'm getting the Coolermaster Hyper 220+ as well as the +4GB RAM some time next week, although from then on, I don't know how else to upgrade my PC ^_^

 

[Noodles :)]

Add a 1tb HDD, what case do you have? might be worth to upgrade that.
After that, the only thing really worth upgrading would be the video card.

 

[Rawrasaurus]

Fine for HDD space atm, currently got an NZXT Hades which I'm pretty satisfied with.

Video card is all that remains I suppose. I might look into it soon.