What motherboard with spdif should I get? PC to 5.1 blu-ray player via optical

[HexedHavoc]

Hi,

I currently have a PC with an optical cable from my motherboard into a blu-ray 5.1 setup (LG BH7520TW), with modified drivers it works fine (minor issues mainly). I plan on building a new PC and was looking on advice on how I should proceed as I plan on still using my current 5.1 setup (even though its old) as it sounds fine to me.

So far I think im gonna get an AMD 7700 cpu as that seems like good bang for buck, so now I am reading up on motherboards to figure out which is the best bang for buck that also has an optical out port on it. Or is there an easier solution that I may not be seeing when connecting my PC to the LG BH7520TW?

My other thought was to consider an external sound card (Sound Blaster X4?) as I think I could connect that to PC via usb and run optical cable from it to my blu-ray player, but not sure on if that would work.

Advice is appreciated

Cheers!

 

[ir_cow]

I'm not understanding why you are sending audio to the Blu-ray player in the first place when it can be skipped right into the TV or AVR.

 

[HexedHavoc]

I'm not understanding why you are sending audio to the Blu-ray player in the first place when it can be skipped right into the TV or AVR.

The 5.1 speakers connect to the blu-ray player and because its old (LG BH7520TW) I don't think hdmi from pc into tv can pass it through?
edit: well it does support ARC apparently, but when I tried it years ago I remember it being very frustrating (couldn't get games to do 5.1 for example) so I just got an optical cable and that worked.

 

[Ferather]

I cant recommend a motherboard specifically, either way you will need a modified driver to get the 5.1 out, either DTS or Dolby.
Any of the new ALC USB versions support encoding. In terms of HDA motherboards you want an ALC 1220.

I would try to steer clear of MSI, they tend to lock out features and make it difficult.