Newbie needs help

[gasman1029]

Hi everyone

Can anyone advise on putting together our first computer based audio system.

We will have a decent gaming spec desktop and we need to power 2 sets of headphones at the same time, as well as having the system plugged into the TV for you tube viewing etc. Any help will be appreciated

[mayhem13]

For headphone amplifier recommendations, see the boys over at headfi.org. They live and breath all things canned! lol

 

Since you're an avid gamer, i'd invest my largest $ ratio possible to the video card of course. An i7 CPU is going to be imperative as well as 8gb ram (make sure the latency matches your mobo and cpu specs)

 

The main issue i see here is system and fan noise as a big potential problem. For that reason, i'd avoid USB interface and go with Optical for audio to the headphone amp which is galvanically isolated unlike USB. Having the system is a seperate room from the speaker system if any would be best but if it's all phones, no worries on fan noise! lol