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New Soundcard or Liquid Cooling for GTX 780


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I want your guys opinion because I am torn in two, I can either get liquid cooling for my GTX 780 or I can get a Xonar Phoebus.

What should I rather get because I am torn in two, I had a Essence ST, but it doesnt fit in this Motherboard so thats my dilemma...

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What motherboard do you have? Is the sound not performing to your liking? On my Asus Formula V the supreme fx sound card that is suppose to be good, was horrible in my opinion. If your not a heavy OC person the stock cooling is just fine on the 780, however playing games or whatever with crappy sound ruins the whole experience in my opinion.

So unless your having overheating issues i would say sound card. But i have always been OCD for good sound. Been putting addin cards since the early 90's...

BTW, I also have the Phoebus. I was hesitant because all the issue over on the rog.asus forums. But i decided to do it anyway and have 0 regrets it is an absolute amazing sound card.

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I want your guys opinion because I am torn in two, I can either get liquid cooling for my GTX 780 or I can get a Xonar Phoebus.

What should I rather get because I am torn in two, I had a Essence ST, but it doesnt fit in this Motherboard so thats my dilemma...

If by water cooling you mean a premade system then don't bother. They are hardly better than air cooling. If you're going to go with a custom setup with a big radiator and lots of fans though then water does make a huge difference.

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What motherboard do you have? Is the sound not performing to your liking? On my Asus Formula V the supreme fx sound card that is suppose to be good, was horrible in my opinion. If your not a heavy OC person the stock cooling is just fine on the 780, however playing games or whatever with crappy sound ruins the whole experience in my opinion.

So unless your having overheating issues i would say sound card. But i have always been OCD for good sound. Been putting addin cards since the early 90's...

BTW, I also have the Phoebus. I was hesitant because all the issue over on the rog.asus forums. But i decided to do it anyway and have 0 regrets it is an absolute amazing sound card.

Well from going from a Sound Card to not having one, especially with my Sennheiser PC 360's it feels like it is lacking that punch in the bass and the highs aren't as sharp as I am used to, and it is bothering me. Think I'll probably go with the sound card, my graphics card isn't over heating and I can still run my games on High and stuff without it getting too hot.

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Look at the Creative ZxR. Its a bit better spec wise than the Xonar StX.

The Zx is also a cheaper alternative but a bit worse spec wise.

I'm using PC 350's and they rock with my ZxR.

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Yeah, Creative stuff is good. I have a X-Fi XtremeGamer rocking for several years now. Just be careful ; their drivers can be really crappy.

They even wanted you to buy the sound card apps again when Vista was released. The same that was on the CD.

Of course, they quickly changed their mind. :)

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what liquid cooling options are there for the gtx780 that are preloop? i can only think of a ghetto antec kuhler 620 or the accelero extreme hybrid thingy

i'd go the sound card as the rest have said

a loop with just a gpu is pointless

and a loop with everything is time consuming and would use more money than you'd expect :o

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  • 4 weeks later...

Do you overclock a lot? Then get the water cooling.

Do you think it's worth to get a better soundcard? Then get the sound card.

Depending on your motherboard, you might need another soundcard. It's not something you need, but it's something many people want. Me for instance, I don't really know if there is a difference. There might be, but I'd choose the water cooling.

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If your going to run Mild Or stock Overclocks on your GTX780, then there's no Need to watercool. However watercooling will help with temps.

Sound is what i say you should invest in because you will hear the difference. As apose to just seeing lower temps under load with your GTX780

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  • 1 month later...

I concur with not upgrading cooling for a GTX 780. The Nvidia cooler is sufficient for noise and even overclocking as it is.

However, a sound card is also not recommended unless you have a (ballparked) $150 or more invested in sound equipment, whether it be speakers or headphones. You simply cannot hear the difference from today's built in sound chips to external chips.

UNLESS, you listen to a lot of heavily distorted instruments such as electric guitars or violins, as they tend to overload the sound bandwidth of integrated chips and cause nasty distortion.

OR, you need to output to a dedicated subwoofer. No motherboard chips properly handle LFE channel separation or crossover settings for subwoofers. At least from those that I've seen.

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If your using headphone's a USB based DAC/AMP might be a better option. I use a modified op amp Ha-INFO U2 Plus and it powers my AKG701 which are hard to drive, I have also listened to other headphone like 600 Ohm beyerdynamic dt880 and the sound quality destroys anything I have gotten out of a pci-e sound card and it highly portable and easy to setup on laptops if need be.

[h=1][/h]

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

I agree with the Asus Xonar line producing wonderful sound. I use headphones for gaming. USB headphones in my opinion do not have the sample or bit rate to sound great compared to a high quality sound card. The Xonar line simply packs a punch when you set it up properly. I've tried soundblaster, realtek, and IDT Audio. They all are inferior to asus's sound that come from the Xonar line. Make sure to buy a high sample and bit rate card, you don't need all the fancy shielding or the controller, just get a Xonar card that fits your slot. Don't forget that you will need a floppy drive power connector for most of the cards so it will power the headphone amp. :)

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  • 1 month later...

I would definitely say cooler. Most motherboards that are current have good soundcards built in. I have in both my laptop and pc an integrated realtek hd w/ dolby digital which is standard in most budget mobos. Especially if you do plan on overclocking or just getting your system to a point where the cpu doesn't throttle down as much. Remember "HEAT" is the #1 killer for electronics. So you can never go wrong with a better cooler.

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