Here’s yet another solution for intergrating your PC’s audio capabilities into your home-theater system: Use an external USB audio device. These won’t deliver multichannel sound over HDMI ,but they’re dead simple to install: Plug the device into your A/V receiver with another, and install the accompanying software.

Asus’s Xonar U1 USB Audio Station (Asus Xonar U1 Sound Card (White)
) and Creative’s X-Fi Surround 5.1(Creative Labs SB1090 USB Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1
)are two examples of external USB audio devices. Both products use Dolby Digital Live to encode any audio signal to 5.1-channel Dolby Digital in real time. The audio is then output through a S/PDIF interface to your A/V receiver.

Asus Xonar U1 Sound Card (White)

• Rampage II GENE
• Intel X58 + ICH10R
• INTEL LGA1366 to 45nm for Core i7 Processors (6400MT/s QPI).
• UP to 24GB DDR3 2000 (O.C.)/1800 (O.C.)/ 1600 (O.C.)/1333/1066 GHz (triple channel memory architecture) x 6 DIMMS.
• 2x PCI-e 2.0 x16 (at dual x16 mode) / 1x PCI-e 2.0 x 4 / 1x PCI.
• 7x SATA (x6 supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10)/ 1x IDE (supports two devices)/ 1x eSATA.
• 1x keyboard PS/2, 12x USB (6x rear panel, 6x onboard), 1x opitical SPDIF out, 1x RJ-45, 2x 1394a (1x rear panel 1x onboard), 6x Audio jacks.
• RM1399
• All IT Hypermarket @ Lowyat Plaza.
• (603) – 2144 6878
• my.asus.com
• 
  

What SpeedDemon has to say?

The ASUS Rampage II GENE is wonderfully stable, high performance X58 board for the Core i7 processors as well a little bit pricey. Given the minimal  area affordable by the microATX standard, ASUS has brilliantly made full use of the available chassis space to deliver and uncompromising set of  features normally seen in its full-sized ATX brethrens. With the winning  combination of easy overclocking  (thanks to the highly intuitive, GENE BIOS) and well-designed layout, this is a very capable microATX X58 that will serve well for beginner and enthusiast-level overclockers thanks to its LAN party-friendly stature.

Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz 8M L3 Cache 4.8GT/sec QPI Hyper-Threading Turbo Boost LGA1366 Processor

Asus Rampage II GENE Core i7 / Intel X58/ DDR3/ CrossFireX & SLI/ A&2GbE/ MATX Motherboard