System Builder Marathon: Day Three

Sound Card: Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS

Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS

The majority of builders would be pleased with the high-quality audio codecs found on today's top motherboards, but the enthusiast will want even more quality. A 109 dB signal-to-noise ratio might be just the thing to make this high-end system sound like something worth its price!

Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS with bay mount I/O unit

Unlike the lesser cards in Creative's X-Fi line-up, the Fatal1ty FPS uses the full version DSP for offloading audio workload from the processor. Unique to the Fatal1ty is its 64 MB cache.

The Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS sells for around $170 at online retail stores.