New motherboards and onboard audio with headphones?

[liddabit]

Hello!
It has been awhile since I have done a build for myself. Living in an Appt I mostly use headphones and not speakers.

In the past with onboard audio I could hear each keystroke, the mouse wheel clicks, and hard drive activity through the headphones. It was quite maddening. My only solution was to get a soundcard to erase the background noise. I would really prefer to save money and avoid buying a soundcard again

Do any of you know if this is still a problem with the new motherboards? Specifically the motherboards for the i5-2500k processors, as I think I am going with that processor.

Thanks !

 

[dac7nco]

I'd suggest you buy a $30 ASUS sound card. I have several rigs, and in my experience the EMI distortion increases with the amount and power of what you have. I'm typing this on rig #1 in my SIG, and am using onboard sound... it is my only system with onboard sound where the front-panel audio doesn't hum or whine without a sound card (my SR-2 machine has the most unusable onboard audio in the last five years... Tylersburg chipsets go without it for a pretty good reason).

I've noticed an interesting correlation, however, to the quality of (1) the PSU, (2) GPU, (3) cooling fans... my current main rig is the first system I've built where consideration of electrical "noise" was a main concern. With onboard audio to the front panel, volume cranked and WinAmp stopped, I hear NOTHING, with a $600 GPU and one of the best PSUs on the market.

Get a $30 sound card, or get Antec's speakers (optical-in), and plug your headphones into that.

Daimon

Welcome to the forums, and thanks for asking a good question.

 

[liddabit]

Thanks a bunch for the great answer and the welcome!

 

[dac7nco]

Thanks a bunch for the great answer and the welcome!

Thank You!