Sound cards are pointless for most people, but there's one reason I still put one in every build

Most people should never buy a sound card, and I'll say that to anyone planning a new PC. Apart from the odd old game that still misses a 20-year-old sound card, onboard audio got good, headsets went USB, and sound cards quietly became a niche. Yet every desktop I've built since 2020 has had a Creative Sound Blaster AE-9 in it.

The reason is my headphones. I listen on 250-ohm Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro studio headphones, and a motherboard jack can't drive them with any room to spare. The AE-9 has a built-in headphone amp. It's the one audio upgrade I bought once and have carried from board to board ever since.

Whether you need one comes down to a number on your headphones' box. For most people, that number says skip it.

Do you need a sound card for gaming in 2026?

Not with a USB, wireless, or 32-ohm headset

If you game on a USB or wireless headset, Bluetooth earbuds, or your TV's speakers, you don't need a sound card, because those bring their own DAC and amp and never touch your motherboard's audio.

Wired gaming headsets usually run between 32 and 60 ohms, so they need little push to get loud, and the Realtek chip on a $150 motherboard handles it without breaking a sweat. Spatial audio, once a big sound card selling point, now lives in software like Windows Sonic.

Even headphone makers have adjusted. Beyerdynamic, whose 250-ohm studio headphones are the whole reason this article exists, now sells a 48-ohm DT 990 PRO X and says it works with a wide range of playback devices. When the company famous for hard-to-drive headphones makes an easy one, the market has spoken.

So if the box says 32, 48, or even 80 ohms, keep your sound card money for games. Mine says 250.

Can a motherboard drive 250-ohm headphones?

It can, but with no headroom left

A motherboard can drive 250-ohm headphones, just not with much left over. Impedance is how hard headphones push back against the signal, and getting the same power into 250 ohms as into 32 takes almost three times the voltage.

On the budget boards I kept buying, the DT 990s got loud enough for YouTube and podcasts with the Windows slider pinned at 100. Then a game would go quiet before a big moment, or a movie would drop its dialogue to a whisper, and there was nowhere left to go. I spent years riding that slider like a DJ who hated the gig, and it drove me a little nuts.

Spec sheets don't help, because nearly everything supports high-impedance headphones on paper. ASRock lists 600-ohm support for the ESS SABRE9219 DAC on its Z890 Taichi AQUA, a flagship board, while ESS rates that chip family at 2 volts. Supporting a headphone means it works. It doesn't mean there's headroom.

Creative's spec sheet for the AE-9 is blunter. It splits the amp into three modes, and High Gain, built for 150 to 600 ohms, swings 5.3 volts. The first evening I plugged the DT 990s into it, I had to drag the Windows volume down to the 30s. The next big explosion in a game made me flinch, and then I laughed out loud, which is a strange reaction to a grenade.

An amp is an amp, though, and you don't need a $450 card to get one.

Why I use a card instead of a USB DAC

I bought it once, and it follows every build

A desktop DAC and amp fixes the same problem, and for plenty of people it's the smarter buy. My colleague ditched motherboard audio for a cheap USB DAC and never looked back, and on a laptop, that's the only route, anyway.

I stick with the card for two reasons. The first is motherboard math. I could pay extra for a board with a fancy ESS chip every time I build, then lose that chip at the next upgrade. I paid for the AE-9 once, in 2020, and it has moved through three builds and two CPU platforms without a single new audio purchase.

The second is the desk. The card sits in a slot I'd leave empty anyway, takes power from the PSU instead of a wall brick, and doesn't eat a USB port. Yes, its Audio Control Module puts a box on my desk, but that box holds the volume knob, two headphone jacks, and an XLR input for a studio mic. That's my entire audio setup.

Creative still sells that pitch, too. Its new flagship, the Sound Blaster AE-X, launched in May, and its announcement promises no desk clutter, extra cables, or power bricks, plus an amp for high-impedance headphones. In 2026, a sound card is basically a headphone amp with a PCIe connector.

None of that makes the AE-9 an easy recommendation, though.

The catch is price and space

Big GPUs make the slot harder to find

The AE-9 is only worth it if your headphones need the voltage, because it isn't cheap. It launched at $350 in 2019, and Creative's US store lists it at $449.99 today. That stings, since it could buy a very nice pair of headphones.

It's also fussier than a USB box. The control module needs its own 6-pin PCIe power cable from the PSU, and Creative only supports the card on Windows, with Sound Blaster Command as the control app.

Then there's the slot. Graphics cards keep getting thicker, and in my current build, the GPU covers the x1 slot entirely, so the AE-9 sits in the bottom x4 slot. It runs fine there, since PCIe cards work in longer slots, but finding it a home has turned into a side quest every time I build. In a mini-ITX case, there's no spare slot at all, and a USB DAC wins outright.

It's going in the next build too

My next build is already a parts list, and the AE-9 is the one line I didn't think about. My volume slider hasn't touched 100 since 2020, and I don't miss it. If you use a headset, a dongle, or anything under about 80 ohms, skip the sound card. Spend that money on better headphones instead. But if you've got 250-ohm cans and a desktop with a free slot, a real amp on a card keeps paying off, one motherboard after another.