Onboard audio on "Premium boards" AKA 7mW max

[PolkFan]

https://www.igorslab.de/en/big-real...rs-fans-temperatures-and-the-onboard-sound/5/


"All of the tested boards didn’t stain themselves with fame, even though the performance of the ALC 1200/1220 is hardly to be criticized, which is unfortunate. It doesn’t matter if a board with 32 or 250 Ω end devices performs better, because in total all output powers below 10 mW per channel are simply too low. Especially since it was not possible with any board to reach full modulation or an incipient distortion. The achievable levels are generally too low. And please take care to always connect headphones or headsets to the front, otherwise little will become even less. "

Even if we are nice and say 7mW to get 2 times louder then that we would need 77mW to get twice as loud as that we would need 777mW. This is why getting a amp is pretty much a given thing for many as a lot of sources are simply to quiet and the PC just can't drive the headphone with its 7mW of power and who's to say what the weaker boards have with less caps/op-amps dedicated for audio.

That's a good close up on one of the boards kind of want to see what type of amp it uses.

This scares me a little it makes me wonder how do cheapo boards do? Older Cmoy amps can do 180mW into 150ohms no gain.

 

[wwenze]

I think there might be some motherboards capable of hitting 2Vrms. With most others though I expect around 0.7Vrms. Unloaded.
Output impedance, 30 to 150 random number. Even soundcards don't do better unless they are specifically mentioned to have headphone out.
And max output current, meh not even gonna bother.

Those soundcards that do have dedicated headphone amp like TPA6120 do perform good enough. Or at least some decent op-amp. In those cases the above paragraph does not apply to them.

Like this motherboard has TPA6120A2
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?19334-A-Guide-To-SupremeFX-IV

This has a 5532. Not optimal for low-z, but better than nothing and decent for higher z

Spoiler

This one comes with DIP8 op-amp
https://www.velocitymicro.com/images/gigabyte-amp-up-audio.html

Oh btw

Older Cmoy amps can do 180mW into 150ohms

V = 5.2V, multiply another 1.414x for peak voltage if values quoted are RMS.
This requires the 9V*2 battery version of the Cmoy. We don't usually get this kind of luxury (voltage supply) in a computer.

Realistically, I would use (or have seen people use) headphone amp ICs powered by a single +V supply, like ES9601K or TPA6133, which generate the -V via internal charge pump. I guess TPA6120 is possible using the computer's +-12V. It's also famous so it has a marketing effect.

 

[PolkFan]

I simply can't understand why they don't make boards with a lot more power i mean i just checked and that op-amp cost $1.37 surely all the useless RGB and plastic "shrouds" can go for premium boards.

 

[sir_frigorifero]

the real problem is that if you want a better amp section on a mobo you need to build a power section dedicated to that, which steals space on the board itself and obviously costs money and time to develop the whole thing.
given how the gaming audio universe is expanding i should say that it would be a waste of money, using rgbs is cheaper and gives more profit. everything is going on the wireless side or USB powered with a mini garbage sound card on the headsets so nothing too surprising that onboard audio still remains crap.
on top of that there's the problem that when the PC usage becomes more intense, for example during gaming, the performances of onboard audio begins to fall because the power given to the audio section is less clean and other devices starts pumping EMIs

 

[wwenze]

The total cost is probably going to cost more than $1.37

But let's see what we can get for as cheap as possible

This gives us 40mW on a good day for around $1. Epic worst case scenario, the total cost won't exceed $10 for a decent amplifier circuit.

But do you actually need the extra power? Seems like 1mW is more than enough for in most scenarios. Unless you need over 90dB SPL for some reason.

And when you don't actually need the extra power, how do you convince people to pay more? By slapping some fancy words and metal covers claiming "audiophile".

 

[Monstieur]

The Creative Sound Core3D (CA0132) on my EVGA X299 Dark drives my LCD-2 Classic to deafening levels with a +10 dB low-shelf. It sounds the same as my Mayflower ARC MK2 which is supposed to do 1 W at 32 ohms. Given that the LCD-2 Classic needs 25 mW to hit 115 dB SPL, the CA0132 outputs at least that much.

https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8673/evga-x299-dark-intel-motherboard-review/index4.html