Low power sound card?

[BushLin]

Is there any data, review or experience that'd help me identify a very low power sound card with an internal spdif header?

At the moment I'm leaning towards Creative's cheaper offerings as I've seen tests which show the new cards to use less power than ASUS's.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[mpilchfamily]

The amount of power the sound card uses is negliagble compaired to all other aspects of the system. Besides the card is getting its power from the 5V rail mostly and all PSus have more then enough power availible on the 5V rail. Your main concern about keeping things low power is the CPU and Video card. You can also choose low power drives but your not going to save much if anything trying to find a low power sound card. It certainly isn't going to effect your PSU selection.

 

[BushLin]

What you say is correct but the difference can be as much as 10w and in a 20-50w system I would personally be bothered by that.

Anyway, I couldn't wait and just picked up an Audigy 2 ZS a few moments ago. It's likely to somewhere between 2-5w and I know the quality of it's output to be good...

Thanks for taking the time to reply though.

 

[themisfit610]

Why doesn't your motherboard have a S/PDIF header?

 

[BushLin]

Why doesn't your motherboard have a S/PDIF header?

Because it wasn't designed to have one. Who would use Realtek etc. by choice?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Because it wasn't designed to have one. Who would use Realtek etc. by choice?

If you are just using the SPDIF output, then why wouldn't you use the onboard Realtek. Especially if you are concerned about saving power.

 

[BushLin]

If you are just using the SPDIF output, then why wouldn't you use the onboard Realtek. Especially if you are concerned about saving power.

... their drivers stink, playing stereo on a surround setup isn't balanced but mainly because the board doesn't have an internal SPDIF connection.