Need Advice / Help - Sound Card for ASUS x99 Deluxe

[Illydth]

Ok, so it's been a LONG while since I posted here, but with as much help as everyone was back a few years ago I figure I'll give it a shot again! (Among the story below I'll try to highlight my questions to make them easier to find and respond to within my saga.) (And I hope I have this in the right location).

**The short story:** I'm trying to figure out if I can put a sound card into my newish Haswell E rig to properly support a brand new set of Astro A50 headphones.

The real connundrum is: Is my 28 Lane PCIe pathway CPU going to support me in this endevor or not given that the box is in an SLI Setup? One card running at 16x one at 8x...am I "out of pathways" and thus can't slot a sound card without reducing the pathways to the video cards? Or is this not a problem? And if it is a problem, is it a real problem or is 8x pathways to a 970GTX more than enough?

FYI: The box is primarily a gaming rig for up to date games (such as Fallout 4, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Dragon Age: Inquisition, etc.). It may end up being used for development as well, but that's neither here nor there.


**The long story:** So a couple months ago I put together a brand new Haswell E rig on an ASUS x99 Deluxe MoBo and made the unfortunate choice of an Intel Haswell E 5820K CPU - Which at the time looked like a heck of a deal for a Hex Core Haswell E CPU.

Of course it wasn't till after I put the machine together that I figured out why the chip was much cheaper than it's next up cousin: Specifically the chip only supports 28 PCIe pathways instead of the usual 40 PCIe pathways. I'm not really unhappy about that, but it FEELS slightly limiting, and now with what I'm trying to do, I'm concerned I've painted myself into a corner.

The system currently has 2 x ASUS NVIDIA 970GTX STRIX cards in it in an SLI setup (again, had I known what I was getting into, I'd have gone the single 980 route instead). Obviously the first card is acting at 16x and the second card is acting at 8x. This I know from the documentation.

On the same board I have the USB 3.1 header card installed also, which (I think according to the documentation) uses different pathways shared with the M.2 controller on the motherboard? So maybe it doesn't take the same pathways as the Video cards? Or maybe it does? And, with the current layout I have one open slot.

Here's where I start becoming utterly useless: This entire concept is foreign to me...I've been building machines for 20 years, but I seem to have lost my understanding of technology somewhere about 3 - 4 years ago...I can't seem to find a good explanation for what PCIe pathways really means to a PC and what a limitation on those pathways means to a system build? So to start with, if some kind soul wants to expound upon the meaning of PCI Pathways in a system, specifically with respect to what more of them allow and what less of them don't, I would appreciate it.

Now on to the Astro A50. To do more than Stereo sound on my new $300 headset, it seems to need a sound source that supports Dolby Digital 5.1/7.1's compression ability. Again, I know very little about this other than what I've read. It's my understanding that while almost every sound card in existence (including the onboard sound of the X99) supports some kind of Dolby Digital standard, the vast majority, including the onboard sound of the X99 DO NOT support compressing that output down the S/PDIF (Optical) port to actually PROVIDE a 5.1 or 7.1 signal. For that, it looks like I need a stand alone sound card...of which I find many recommendations for the ASUS Xonar (DX seems to be the recommendation, I can get ahold of a DSX pretty easily).

(Next Question: I've spent a metric ton on this system already, REALLY not looking for a high end expensive sound card. Is the ASUS Xonar DSX 7.1 a reasonable choice? Or is there a good reason to go with the more expensive DX?)

And that finally brings me to my connundrum: Since I already have 24 of 28 PCIe Pathways taken up by the two video cards, and another set of pathways (assumebly) taken up with the USB 3.1 card, do I even have the ability to slot a sound card and get the system to work with it?

I believe I have the option to run the two video cards in 8x mode leaving me another 8x for more cards, but that seems like a HUGE waste to me in that the sound card isn't going to take up more than a x1 path, and taking 8 paths away from the primary graphics cards would seem like robbing peter to pay...well...my dead grandmother. Of course I don't understand much of this at all anyway, so for all I know I'm asking a REALLY stupid question.

So...
* Can I put a sound card into this thing?
* If I do, do I have to drop the Graphics Card running at 16x down to 8x?
* If I do have to drop the Graphics Card's pathways, is that really going to have an effect on my system or is it really just academic?
* If I cannot put a sound card into this thing is there an alternative?
** Say, maybe a USB Based Box of some kind that would run off the USB ports?
** And if this is an option is there a recommended one that has an optical output? (The A50 ONLY does optical, TOSLINK is the only connection option I have).

Call me utterly confused and unsure where even to go to find info.

Any help or advice anyone might give me would be MOST appreciated.

--Doug Wagner

p.s. REALLY Technical info:

Rig:
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=24918331

MoBo Setup:

Slot 1/2: STRIX ASUS NVIDIA GeForce 970GTX
Slot 3: Empty
Slot 4: PCIe USB 3.1 Card
Slot 5/6: STRIX ASUS NVIDIA GeForce 970GTX

M.2 Slot is NOT in use.

NOTE: APOLOGIES for the length of the post.

 

[Kilbane]

IIRC the X99 Deluxe has an optical out on board. As Toslink is a digital "pure" signal, there is no difference between running optical from onboard or through a soundcard or an external DAC or TOSlink. The sound pass through will be exactly the same to the A50 base.

 

[Illydth]

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1916778/spdif-output-sound-card.html

So Grain of salt, I understand that, however, what's posted here seems to contradict what you've said.

While I agree the optical out on any board is pure digital and pure pass through, what I'm understanding is that some boards will decode and then compress a 5.1 or 7.1 signal before it sends it on through the SPDIF output, allowing for an actual 5.1 or 7.1 signal to come through optical.

Most of what I've read in the last 24 hours about this says that SPDIF cannot pass a 5.1 or 7.1 signal directly as there's not enough bandwith to do so, that data must be compressed by something like the Dolby Digital Live standard which most on board MoBo cards DO NOT have (the chipsets are capable, the manufacturers like ASUS refuse to pay the licensing fee to turn on the functionality).

Therefore, if you put something like an ASUS Xonar DX in front of the SPDIF output, you get real 5.1 or 7.1 sound because the sound card will be capable of sending a real 5.1/7.1 compressed signal out to the A50's DAC which will then send it to the headset. Without the sound card, however, you're getting stereo sound which, then, is being upconverted to 5.1/7.1 by the A50's DAC/Software, giving you VIRTUAL surround sound instead of REAL surround sound.

According to some reports, it actually makes a pretty big difference, and for $300 for a pair of headphones, I'd like to know I'm getting the best audio quality I can get.

Really, my larger question surrounds whether a 28 lane CPU in my configuration (16x to Video Card 1, 8x to Video Card 2 and 4x reserved for the M.2 Controller which isn't allocated to the PCIe slots) can support adding a sound card.

Additional research here seems to be that the Deluxe supports 2 configs on it's PCIe Slots for 28 pathways:

* x16/x0/x8
* x8/x8/x8

(From a Review:
---------------------------------------------
Intel's annoyingly segmented lineup also includes a 28-lane variant, the Core i7-5820K, which forces
the third and fifth x16 slots to trade their Gen3 links for sluggish Gen2 x1 connections to the chipset.
The remaining x16 slots retain their Gen3 connectivity, which can be distributed in x16/x0/x8 and
x8/x8/x8 configurations.

Those setups only add up to 24 lanes each, leaving four lanes untapped. The remainder is reserved

for PCIe SSDs plugged into the Deluxe's M.2 socket.
----------------------------------------------

Can a PCIe card run in the x0 slot? Or would I need to re-configure for x8/x8/x8 mode which means I lose 7 lanes to the primary video card.

How bad is it to lose 7 lanes to a GTX 970 Card?

 

[Kilbane]

Sorry for the delay dude, missed your reply.
First off, SPDIF and TOSLink are not the same thing. SPDIF is an analogue signal passed over typically copper wire coax. The bandwidth available to said analogue signal is limited due to hardware limitations therefore 5.1/7.1 signals often get compressed. TOSLink or Optical out is a digital signal using fibre optic transfer, the digital signal is easily converted to light giving easy lossless transmission at high speed. Optical transfer does not get compressed due to the huge bandwidth available to pass through the signal.

So ultimately do not worry about compression effecting the audio signal as it will not be compressed as the sound card will be nothing but an expensive optical port due to the fact it will not be doing anything other than passing through a signal unaltered the same as your Mobo will do.

If your dead set on getting a sound card after this, yes you can add it into your system, yes you will need to lose bandwidth from a card. You will not see any real world difference in performance. As for the slot being on 0x PCIe, effectively your Mobo will just disable that slot so nothing can be used in it.

 

[AlienALX]

By some sort of sorcery my Fury X runs at X8. I don't know why, because the only other add in card I have is a X4 SSD.

It hasn't affected performance at all, I still get identical results to X16 with the same card.