HTPC Building Series: Achieving great 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound

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In previous posts, while talking about building up our Home Theater PC, from the ground up, and on a budget, we’ve focused on a few goals. Things like what we want to see the system, as a whole, do for our home entertainment experience. We’ve talked, in general, about some of the hardware we plan on ordering to put into this bad boy. We’ve even gone into detail on the one essential piece that is going to drive everything - that being the motherboard. Today we want to focus on how we are going to get amazing sound out of this system.

Since we are relying on the MSI MS-7411 motherboard, that means we can one one of these two top-of-the-line sound solutions. The first is a 5-channel x 100W card, which built-in amplifier. That this means is that you can connect your 5.1 speakers directly to this card, with no need for a receiver in between. Perfect if you want to make this machine your all in one solution for all your entertainment needs, and don’t own a receiver.

But what about those of us who want our 7.1 goodness? Well, we are in luck too, as the 7.1 solution is less expensive than the 5.1, since it doesn’t have a built-in amp. However, this means you’ll need a receiver to plug into that supports analog connections for each channel. Luckily, we do, so we are going to go with the cheaper route.

In our next article, we will talk about what we are going to do to drive content to this HTPC, and we’ll see if we can ditch our cable box.

In case you were wondering, here are the details and specs on the two cards we mentioned:

Option #1:
5-Channel x 100W (AAIC100-5) Card

• 100W Peak, Channel Drive, 8?
• THD+N: <0.1%, 1kHz, 1W
• SNR: >105 dB
• Frequency Response: ±0.5 dB (20Hz to 20kHz)
• 93% Efficient Power Amplifier
• Price of MSI motherboard with 5.1 card: Approximately $200 USD

Option #2: 3 Channel to 7 Channel Pre-Amplifier (AAIC7) Card

• High Quality Home Theater Performance
• Line-Level Outputs, 2.0Vrms
• THD+N: <0.01%, 1kHz, -6dBFS
• SNR: >110dB
• Price of MSI motherboard with 7.1 pre-card: Approximately $180 USD

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