Gaming pc sound card help

SnakePlissken006

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Hi

I'm planning on building a gaming pc and ill be using it hooked up to my 4k tv. I was wondering if a sound card would be needed. I'll be using hdmi arc for audio on my receiver and 5.1 speakers. The way its set up is the receiver is plugged into my tvs arc via hdmi so all devices benefit from it so it won't be plugged to my pc via hdmi. Will a sound card make a difference or am I better off without one? Thanks
 
That depends on how your PC is connected to your TV.

If you're transmitting audio over HDMI between the PC and TV then a sound card won't be used - the HDMI audio device is provided by the graphics card.

If you're using S/PDIF then you definitely want a sound card capable of on-the-fly Dolby/DTS encoding.
 
Nah just using hdmi plugged into tv. I most likely won't need one then. Will surround sound on windows work via arc?

If
a) windows detects the Dolby/DTS 5.1 support on the TV HDMI
b) the software your using supports passing Dolby/DTS 5.1 audio.

yes to both then you will get surround sound.

The default surround sound of Windows is PCM however PCM 5.1 is not possible over ARC only HDMI pass-through or the new eARC standard.

The PC gaming wiki has a list of games with surround sound, some may have Dolby support, some may be PCM 5.1 only.
 
Nah just using hdmi plugged into tv. I most likely won't need one then. Will surround sound on windows work via arc?

No. ARC is for sending audio in the opposite direction to the video. It's only being used for the TV to receiver leg. The PC to TV connection will transmit via the normal HDMI audio channel.
 

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