Did you just inadvertently make an audiophile joke? 
Not intentionally.
At any rate, that old Intel DG43NB motherboard had to go. It was getting to the point where it had trouble booting, and the processor V
CC was swinging wildly. I didn't really want to pitch a Core 2 Quad and 4 GB of DDR2 RAM, and I was leery of the possibility that a "latest and greatest" motherboard might not get along with XP, not to mention the extra cash I'd need to spend for a new CPU and DDR3 RAM. Fortunately, there were still a few LGA775 boards out there, and I ended up with an MSI G41M-P33. The switchover went smoothly, insofar as switching out motherboards on any Windows system can be called a "smooth" upgrade. I had to install new drivers, and then it bitched at me about reactivating it since the hardware changed (fuck you, Microsoft, this was a legitimately purchased copy of XP). At least it didn't fail to activate. Voltages are rock-steady and in spec.
As a contrast, I had Linux Mint 14 on a separate partition to see how it handled my 0404 USB, and Everything Just Worked with the new mobo - no drivers needed! I have my option when XP becomes untenable. (Other systems of mine have CentOS, OpenIndiana, Windows 7, or pre-WTF Ubuntu.)
Post-mortem on the old Intel board: zillions of bulging and/or tilted capacitors. The real WTF is that all of the caps are Nippon Chemi-Con, a well-respected name in the capacitor biz. The board was never ever used with crap PSUs, either, so I'm guessing something on the board went wonky (maybe a voltage regulator or a DC-DC converter) and started slow-cooking the caps. I guess the recent news that Intel was getting out of the PC motherboard business shouldn't be too much of a surprise; this is the second Intel board I've seen with BBQ'd caps.
Topic: Headphone / DAC (Read 14124 times)