A7N8X-X Onboard Sound and Rising Temperatures

[Philip Harding]

I have the Asus A7N8X-X (non deluxe) motherboard with the Realtek onboard
audio, and have noticed a raise in temperature when playing audio.

When idling/general windows task the pc runs at 33-35 degrees c, but when
playing any audio track in windows media player, or WinDVD5, the
temperatures rise to 38-40. This is with <10% processor usage.

Under heavy load the CPU is at around 43-44 degrees.

Is the audio chip on this mobo "soft" audio, similar to "soft"modems, in
that it uses the CPU instead of hardware based chips, which is why I'm
seeing this increase, or am I barking up completely the wrong tree?

Will buying a PCI soundcard such as the creative SB Live 5.1 have the same
affect?

All temperature readings are made from the ASUSProbe software, after the
system has been on an hour or two.

Sys Specs:

2800+ Athlon XP (Barton, non o/c)
512mb PC2700 Twinmos RAM
GF4 Ti4800SE (Gainward)
A7N8X-X (non deluxe)
80GB IBM Deskstar 7200rpm

WinXP Pro, all drivers off the ASUS Mobo CD

 

[DaveW]

The onboard audio does use the CPU for the audio processing and puts about a
10% load on it. That's why you should add your own separate soundcard.