now this is a little guide that I've been meaning to do for a while this is
an ASUS Zonar zense or sense uh whatever
you prefer to call it I'm going to call it Zen for the sake of pronouncing it
how I feel it should be pronounced uh here you can see there's a little
acoustic powered by Sennheiser logo on
the side so that is because this is part of that bundle that comes with the PC
350 uh special edition headset which
uses uh the larger Jacks for for both the microphone as well as the headphones
here's your standard 7.1 Channel audio out uh rather 8 channel 7.1 I don't know
why they call it 7.1 Channel and then there's a spit if out that is capable of
both coaxial as well as optical audio
output so what I'm going to be doing with this sound card today which I did
do a full Tech tips episode on and um
what I what I talked about a lot in that Tech tips episode was the importance of
a headphone amp for getting the most out of your s so this card has an integrated
amp and today what we're going to be doing is we are going to be changing oh
yeah the integrated amp that's why it needs a MOX power connector even though
it's a sound card uh we're going to be changing the opamps so isus had a um
like a special little program a little while back where they were offering a
free amp upgrade for the Zonar Essence
St STX and the Zin so here I have my uh
my opamps here these are the replacement ones and I'm going to be walking you
guys through the procedure of changing the off amps on your Zonar
zents so first of all there are a few screws that need to be removed here now
remember you can put in whichever op amps you want the ones here are
um yeah I'm just going to show you guys the part number and let you figure that
out for yourself because the reality of it is I am actually not that hardcore of
an audio buff so I wouldn't know the difference
between these and other opamps so
hopefully you guys can see that pretty
well okay so I'm just going to be showing you guys the hardware aspect of
installing the stock ASUS op amp upgrade kit so undoing the
screws I better zoom out so you guys can see what I'm doing better
here
okay now I'm not sure if this is going to come off yet there may be one more screw let's just undo this one and see
what
happens there we go okay so we're going to pull off what is a shroud SL Emi
blocker slash uh heat sink I don't know what it is but
it looks like it's also attached to the PCI bracket here so that's uh one more
screw there we
go looks like it uses the same kind of screw so should be no problem to
remember which ones go where okay it is not a heat sink so let the record show
that so right there those are the included op
amps and replacing them should be quite straightforward here this also gives us
a look at the um at the insides of the
Zone r card that we're using here so hm this
might actually be kind of challenging CU I'm having a little bit of trouble getting my uh camera to stay right now
ah there we go okay so what I may
actually need since it's kind of hard to get in there is
uh H I might need just a little screwdriver or something so give me a
moment here guys okay so I'm back with a little slot screwdriver so what I'm
going to do to remove these guys I'm just going to pry them up a little bit
here that was
easy there we
are just going to pull these guys up woo they jumped around look at that
like little bed bugs beep beep beep so
before I take them off completely I'm just going to note which way they are
installed so the Little Dot here is in the bottom left so I'm going to go ahead
and install the new ones in the same
orientation as the existing
ones there's a tech tip for you when you're replacing something install the
new one the same way the old one was in there so there they are so I've got my
little dots on the bottom left here so I'm going to go ahead and position
them in the right
position if I can if that's not too
challenging for me it may just
be uhoh he's
stuck
uhoh
H
challenging never fear there we are okay let's try this again so maybe
I'll do the bottom one first cuz that one looks easier so let's line up the
one side and then
the other side should go in got to give the legs a bit of a
squeeze and then we can push that
in okay so whoa I just hit my lens awesome
last thing I need is more scratches on this
lens give me a second here
guys okay got it guys just needed to give it a little bit more pressure and
then there you go it is now firmly seated so you just want to check both
sides uh I'm just inspecting it a little
closer right now okay yeah so you can just inspect both sides make sure those
legs are in there
right there you are and now we'll go
ahead and put in our other one being sure to put it in the correct
orientation and squeeze the legs closed a little bit cuz I noticed I had a
little bit of trouble getting the other one in with them so wide
set there we go just make sure they're
uh positioned in the right place and
then go ahead and push down
firmly oh you know what see that one went in a lot further I don't know if
the other one's uh quite in the right place
actually
h okay let's try pulling up the uh first
one see this is the problem with doing guides when you haven't actually done
something
before okay so there you have it the okay guys sorry I got it figured out
what happened was the legs of this one were a little bit wide and they were
getting caught on the uh on the plastic
housing around the op amp slot so now it
is figured out they are both in firmly and securely so all that's left is to uh
throw the Shroud back on and enjoy the upgraded sound quality remember these
pieces are the ones that are actually going to determine the
overall um in a lot of ways the overall
quality and the overall flavor of the sound coming out of your sound card so I
look forward to trying them out thanks for checking this out online as techtips
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