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lkd wrote:Got a secret for ya: Unless you're an insane audiophile/audio engineer/MIDI musician, a separate sound card is quite pointless. Hogs up a spot on your PCI slots and adds no significant value. When Windows Vista (and beyond) was built, there was a specific decision to remove DirectSound and DirectSound3D from the Hardware Abstraction Layer (I used to be on the Windows Gaming team at Microsoft). This means that all the sound work is handled through the media layer now. It doesn't mean your sound card is obsolete, but just that the overall effect is negligible for DirectSound benefits. Of course, if the game/app supports OpenAL and your sound card supports that, you're in luck, but that's the exception rather than the rule.

Now that there is interesting intel. Thanks for sharing.

Just from your specs, 1000watt power supply is a bit over the top. In my personal PC right now, I have a quad core Intel, 8 gigs ram, 6 HDs, a 8800 GT video card, 2 cd drives, and I am running it with a 550 Watt Roswill power supply and have never had a problem. I am an IT manager at a bank and also do computer services on the side and have used over 70 of those Roswill 500 and 550 watt power supply in everything from gaming machines, to video surveillance, and business and home use PCs and have only had 1 fail so far in about 4 years of use since I started to use them. This is the 500 watt version, I have been very happy with them. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817182076

Anyway, just thought you could save a little money and spend it towards a better video card or something like that.

As far as sound cards. I recently put one of these in my media PC and wow what a difference it make over the onboard sound. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829271002