Review on Upgrade Your Audio Experience: EVGA NU Audio Pro Surround Add-On - Lifelike 7.1 Surround Sound, PCIe with Audio Note Design by George Woods

Shot winner: After the device was installed and the drivers and software worked; The sound is rich, bright and audiophile. Aesthetically, the RGB lighting is cool and programmable, but the look is more reminiscent of ASROCK TAICHI or ASUS Prime than ASUS ROG, Gigabyte Aorus, or MSI Godlike. You can see images on the EVGA website. After listening for a while I feel the marketing hype is justified. When the card drives some of the KRK Rockit 5 studio monitors, an immersive, explosive, detailed and realistic soundscape can be heard and felt. The software is easy to use. So far, interacting with Windows 10 has been stable and non-invasive. I'm a happy listener on all these counts. The downside here is that EMI/RF noise can be heard from unshielded monitors, albeit at a very low level, when using the standard speaker output compared to the optical S/PDIF output. So, RFID security fabric, here I am. Try again EVGA glasses: I didn't like that the TOSlink port fell apart immediately. It uses a molded door and connection mechanism that is too delicate and immediately disconnects from the I/O frame after a slight tug on the high-quality optical cable (TOSlink S/PDIF). If you look at the same TOSlink port on something else that is still working, you can see why these manufacturers are NOT using this plastic S/PDIF port with a stone's throw and why this device is still working after many tugs and cable pulls. The design element I really didn't like was the "higher than average solder joints sticking out of the PCB". I was extremely vigilant in assessing if for any reason the card would flex enough to make conductive contact with an AMD Radeon 5700XT GPU (with a metal cover) and ended up installing it on the PCI-e bus first. Mine now has an insulating felt layer to prevent a short if the case cracks a bit (not shown in the photo) or something metallic otherwise gets caught on the surface. directed to reduce warranty claims and improve functionality. This is a brand new product for EVGA, a company in the high performance PC and enthusiast market, so I don't think this indicates a system issue and at the time of this review some or all of these issues may have been resolved in the current inventory. I would like to fix mine so that the S/PDIF (optical) connection can be used, the sound card sounds significantly better than the built-in ASUS Realtek Premium device (ASUS Crosshair Hero Ryzen Mobile) and is worth the money I paid for it. I've replaced some tired PCI-only RME Audio 9632 cards and also disabled the built-in Realtek). Most people are happy with the onboard audio, which is pretty good as found on ROG motherboards, but adding this sound card offers a "really obvious sonic improvement." Mic preamp so a professional audio resume gives confidence in this purchase. Thanks and (no thanks, like I said) EVGA.