The EVGA NU Audio sound card is the real deal. Stacked with premium audio components and engineered by one of the most respected hi-fi companies in the world, England's Audio Note, not only does it outshine every other consumer-grade sound card on the market (as small of a market as it is), but also ends up being more powerful and better-sounding than many external DAC/amps priced well above the $250 EVGA is asking for it.

This isn't a sound card for your 7.1 surround sound or Dolby Atmos setups as it can only deliver 5.1 surround sound to an external decoder through its S/PDIF output. Even though EVGA told us they'll add a virtual surround sound technology to the headphone output through software updates, make no mistake: this is a stereo hi-fi product through and through. I was absolutely blown away with its sound performance and the fact that it can bring the best out of pretty much any pair of headphones or speakers connected to it.

Advanced audio engineering is paired with a nice design and a bit of cool, unobtrusive RGB bling. It would have been even prettier had they fully shielded it, though, instead of leaving the bottom of the six-layer PCB exposed, which is the part of the card you'll have to look at through the transparent side-panel of your case.

I wasn't as impressed by the card's microphone input. As you can hear if you take a listen to the microphone samples on the previous page of this review, the microphone input has a constant metallic buzz, which, while not extremely audible, shouldn't be there. To be perfectly clear, it can absolutely be used for Discord, Skype, and every other form of online/gaming communication. I just wouldn't recommend it for serious Twitch or YouTube streaming, recording voiceovers, and similar, more demanding use cases. For those, you'll want to resort to an external mixer you'll then connect to the line input of the EVGA NU Audio sound card.

Here's the thing, though. The EVGA NU Audio's output performance is so good that I'd recommend it even to those who aren't interested or plan to ever use its inputs. It's a very interesting proposal to anyone after a great DAC/amp for use with their PC. The NU Audio sound card offers terrific performance to such users and doesn't even seem all that expensive when you consider the cost of various hi-fi products it surpasses in terms of pure sound quality.