Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsBig Letdown, Riddled With Problems
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 29, 2021
So I was pretty excited to try out this card, as I had read fairly good reviews about it, and hadn't actually experimented with anything other than on-board audio before.
First, if you have a dual or triple fan GPU installed in the upper-most PCI-E slot (what most motherboards use as the X-16 slot a GPU is most often installed in) in a standard ATX case, you're not going to be able to utilize the X-1 slot for this card, as it almost completely blocks cooling fan flow from the GPU. A minor issue, but still kind of annoying.
After using a lower X-16 slot in my motherboard for this card, and installing the proper drivers and Asus software, when using the headphone out, which has a built in Amp and can supposedly drive headphones up to 150 ohms impedance, I heard a faint crackling at lower volume from any bass driven note. As I continued to use the card, I realized this faint crackling can be heard using any of the outputs on the card. Not much in the way of troubleshooting online for this either. After removing the card and reverting to on-board audio, voila. No more crackling.
When I tried to use both the front and rear outputs on the card, the card would only output to the front. No audio would be output through the "center" output either.
And finally, at random times, a complete breakdown of the audio would occur, with whatever was being input by the computer, resulting in audio which sounded like a crashing noise, extremely low bitrate, and a slowing of whatever speech or music was being played, requiring a system reboot.
The software wasn't too great either, with the equalizer, bass boost, and compressor settings providing no noticeable change in audio quality. If you wish to leave headphones plugged into the back of the card on windows 10, you'll need to utilize the program from Asus, as the source is not selectable in the windows task bar.
Unbelievable.
I've never had much luck with Asus products before (big problems with high end Asus laptops), but this one might be the nail in the coffin for me and Asus.
