We purchased the EVGA Nu Audio Card so that our expert reviewer could thoroughly test and evaluate it. Read on for our full product review.
EVGA Now Audio Review: Audiophile Internal Card in 2019??
In 2019, many audio enthusiasts claim that sound cards are outdated and inferior to external amplifiers and DACs of the same price. The EVGA Nu Audio Card proves otherwise. This is not just a card for gamers, but also a card for audiophiles. EVGA has partnered with Audio Note, a renowned high-end audio company, to design a card that can compete with systems four times its price. Despite the fact that the Nu costs just $250, no corners have been cut in its production. It offers crystal clear, powerful audio and a full-featured suite of equalization software that will please even the most demanding listeners.
The internals of the EVGA Nu Audio Card are astounding. To create the Nu, EVGA worked with Audio Note to develop a product with top-notch components. Of course, many of the components are from Audio Note themselves, but EVGA also added capacitors from WIMA and Nichicon, respected names in the world of audio electronics. If the ADI OP275 op-amp (see: What is an op-amp?) doesn’t suit your needs, you can swap it out. The design features best-in-class noise rejection (123 dB SNR), and the headphone output supports headphones with an impedance of 16 to 600 ohms. If you don’t want to plug your headphones into the back of the case, there’s a front panel jack on the side of the card that connects directly to the headphone output, meaning there’s no loss of quality. The only inconvenience is that the Nu requires a SATA cable from your computer’s power supply to deliver this promised performance. All that extra juice isn’t wasted, though: all that extra juice is funneled through an onboard, ultra-low noise linear power supply (this keeps audio clean and undistorted by the electrical signals from your PC components). It now even features a hefty heatsink to keep this high-performance power supply from overheating.
On the outside, the EVGA Nu sports a sleek gunmetal gray chassis with black sides. It looks stylish and understated, while the RGB-illuminated EVGA logo provides a welcome pop of color. The card supports up to a 5.1 setup, with a 3.5mm line out, a microphone in, a 6.3mm headphone jack, a 3.5mm line in, and an optical S/PDIF out. Each of these promises minimal noise, at under 120dB SNR. It’s a little disappointing that there’s no 7.1 channel support, but the ports provided are of extremely high quality to make up for that.
