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Review on Enhance Your Gaming Experience with Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus Pure Edition Sound Card: Unleash the Power of SABRE32 Ultra-Class Audio Technology, Dolby Digital, & DTS by Adam Czajkowski ᠌

Revainrating 2 out of 5

Product is disappointing, not what it promises.

And so, I'll start with the visual notes found after removing the iron pan (circuitry, first photo). The connectors on the back side immediately caught my eye, of which only ONE has gold-plated contacts, all four others are made of ordinary metal, like on cards. It’s somehow strange and not solid, knowing that you paid 12k for a card and you were deprived of gold. After going through a bunch of reviews with photos from the Internet, I realized that it was only me who was so "lucky" and ALL connectors should be with gold-plated contacts (second photo). And the last thing that caught my eye was the reduced number of input emails. capacitors. In my copy, only one small conderik was left, although there should be THREE of them (one powerful and two ordinary; third photo). And let's move on to the main headaches of this card of this sound system. Namely: periodic shifting / mixing of sound channels, this is especially annoying in games, and especially in CS: GO. When left becomes right and vice versa. Sometimes the sound can just become MONO. It can be treated by switching to the speakers and back through proprietary software. But this is not enough for a long time, and after 5-10-15 minutes, again, trouble with the channels. Infuriates. FUCKING. Creative acknowledged this problem, but they do not fix it in any way, allegedly this is a disaster on Ryzen processors. But after testing in another system unit on an Intel processor, where all the troubles were successfully manifested, it becomes clear that the problem is not in AMD. Another problem of my copy is that you can’t set the volume above 23-25%, the sound disappears stupidly and is treated only by restarting the PC. Let's finish with constant background noises in the headphones, as if the wind is blowing. And pickups (beeping, cod) in games when the video card is active. Here is such a card for almost 12,000. Two points out of five only for high-quality sound. I handed over my copy under warranty, I am waiting for the result of diagnostics from OnlineTrade. Ru, I will try to replace it with another copy, I hope there will be no such sores. Buy / not buy, decide for yourself.

img 1 attached to Enhance Your Gaming Experience with Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus Pure Edition Sound Card: Unleash the Power of SABRE32 Ultra-Class Audio Technology, Dolby Digital, & DTS review by Adam Czajkowski ᠌



Pros
  • The most important advantage, of course, is the Sound. Compared to the built-in on the ALC887 motherboard, it's just "heaven and earth". The card had to be returned under warranty (more on this in the comments); now there is simply no desire to listen to the sound on the built-in. And the advantages include a rather stylish design of the card. That's all.
Cons
  • The main drawback, of course, is the Price (almost 12k), but you need to know that a good sound has never been cheap or worth it. And in my opinion, an absolutely useless backlight tape, which only increases the cost of the card. When you connect headphones to the front jacks, the sound connected to the rear jacks is NOT muted, as it happens on the built-in, which is very inconvenient. The shortcomings don't end there. The biggest drawback of the card is my copy, which I bought through the seller ONLINETRADE. RU, which I will talk about in the Comments section:

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