Asustek Xonar Essence STX 2 Channel PCI Express Audio Card

Title : Asustek Xonar Essence STX 2 Channel PCI Express Audio Card
ASIN : B001P9O894
Description : The Stock availability and Price are correct at the last update, however, our Web team are working very hard to update more detailed information on this product - Please call us on 0844 5838000 should you require any more details
Features :

• Device Type:Sound card
• Form Factor:Internal
• Interface Type:PCI Express x1

List Price : £178.71
Price : £147.11
Saved Price : £31.60

category: Products
brand: ASUSTek
Item Page Detail URL : link
Rating : 4.3
Review : Staggeringly good sound. Installation fiddly and software not the best.
First impressions are excellent: the card is very attractively packaged with a 'high-end' feel to it. The card itself is on a very high quality PCB substrate and clearly uses very high quality components.

Fitting into my case (a Silverstone HTPC case), the card could not be screwed down fully as the back panel is slightly too long at the bottom, and this would have caused misalignment of the PCI-E connector. Note that the card requires an additional IDE-style power connection, and won't work without it. The card is reasonably slim, but too high to fit a low profile case.

There is both a rear headphone output and a front panel headphone output as part of the HD-Audio interface (also line in and out on the rear). More on these later.

Getting the drivers to install was a pain: my brand new, clean Windows 7 64 bit installation wouldn't detect the hardware, and I needed to install the drivers myself. This turned out to require searching for the drivers on...