Maximising sound quality from USB

[CageyH]

Roughly three years on and my EVGA Supernova 550W G2 failed in a smelly way.
It melted three SATA power connectors, taking out two optical drives in the process. It also left melted plastic on the SSD my music library is kept on.
The PSU has been sent back to EVGA (7 year warranty) and I am waiting to see what they will do about it.

It is the first PSU failure I have had in my numerous years of using PCs. Luckily the SSD was salvageable.
So, I have upgraded the PSU in my main rig to a Corsair HX1000 and put the HX750i in the HTPC. It is probably twice the size of what it needs to be, but I no longer trust the EVGA Supernova G2. Yes, it is away at the moment, but if they send me a new one, it won't be going in my PC.

[Macca]

Supernova, the clue's in the name.

At least you got your music safe, but no back up?

[CageyH]

There are two copies of the drive.

[Gazjam]

Cant go wrong with Corsair PSUs.
used them for all my PC builds, including the machine I'm typing from.

Did you have any clues on the buildup to it failing?
Spontaneous reboots, coil whine or mystery BIOS resets?

[CageyH]

Spontaneous reboots. I was trying to see what the issue was, when the magic smoke escaped from the SATA power connectors.
It absolutely stank. I thought it could have been the de-lidded i7-6700k playing up, so I changed the thermal paste. The magic smoke escaped shortly after.

The EVGA was highly rated by "Johhny Guru" in in-depth PSU reviews.
Ideally I should have gone for a "Seasonic Fanless Titanium Prime" for the HTPC, for a full silent build. The Corsair still has a fan, and I could probably get away with a 350W to 400W PSU.
But for my water cooled rig, I figured 750W was a bit near the limit, hence the HX1000. The HX750i will do nicely in the HTPC. They carry a 10 year warranty, so they should be good enough.

[CageyH]

The new EVGA Supernova G3 has arrived with a new set of cables, to add to the SATA cables they sent me the day before, and the CPU cable that is incoming.
It seems that the guys that handle the RMAs do not know what gets sent out.
Now I need to find a use for a 550W ATX PSU...

I think it will do nicely as a paperweight for now, until the time comes for a new build several years down the line.

[CageyH]

Over the holidays, I have been wondering if it is worth adding an "Audiophile" USB card to my PC.
The current config is:
i7-6700k built into a fanless enclosure.
16 Gb Corsair Vengeance RAM
Corsair HX750i (platinum) PSU
Asus Maximus Hero VIII (Z170) mobo
Asus (passively cooled) GT1030 GPU
Elfidelity AXF-100 Pro III USB card
Samsung 2.5" Evo SSDs.

I was looking at the JCAT Femto USB and the Matrix Element H USB cards, and these are around €350 to €450.
I am not sure if they will give a substantial improvement over the Elfidelity card, based on the "quality" of my PC components and the PSU.

The money may be better spent elsewhere in my system, but where?

[Macca]

There's three things you can pretty much always improve on:

Turntable and their associated bits
Loudspeakers
Room acoustics

No idea about USB cards, sorry, it's not a rabbit hole I have ever been down or even researched. I just stick in a CD and press play.

[Gazjam]

Back in the day Kevin I ran a SOTM usb card in my music servers,
sounded better than Motherboard USB out straight out the packet.

It REALLY showed what it was cabable of when I sorted out clean power throughout the PC itself,
the biggest hitter being seperating the 3 power rails and powering them independantly from linear PSUs.
The USB card had its own linear as well, so was running 4 to one PC box!

All else being equal, thats where I'd be looking to improve your PCs sound.
USBs not the best transmission method for digital, something to consider?
To get it to work properly you need to do some work on it, I found fitting a SPDIF output connected from SPDIF motherboard header with silver in teflon cable was better than any of the USB tweaks i tried.

Sound was excellent once I got the power sorted though, kinda why (I guess) Im such a stickler for it in my hifi setup, old habits die hard.

[CageyH]

Thanks Gaz.
I was looking at power, but it seems very expensive to sort out properly, as there seem to be fewer options.
FOr the price of what is available, I think I could get an Innuos Zenith.