THE NU AUDIO

Measuring 176mm in length, 111mm in height and 16mm in thickness the 898g heavy NU Audio Card by EVGA is quite large.

The Audio Note UK logo is placed on the lower right corner of the card right next to a black heatsink coming out from the aluminum shroud.

A designed by EVGA statement is engraved on the PCI bracket.

At the front of the card we find two gold plated RCA stereo line-outs, gold plated 6.3mm headphone output, 3.5mm line and microphone inputs, and a digital S/PDIF (optical) output.

On the other end we find a SATA power connector (yes, the card needs extra power directly from your PSU - using a Molex to SATA power adapter is not recommended).

At the top we find the front I/O connector and the 10-mode RGB LED.

The NU Audio Card features a silver and gold-plated, multi-layer PCB design.

Exposing the interior is very easy since there are just 7 screws that hold the aluminum shroud in place.

Closer examination of interior components reveals the ADI OP275 and AD8056 OP-AMP modules, Maxim Integrated DS1882 dual log audio digital potentiometer, AK4493 DAC, AKM AK5572 ADC, Cirrus Logic CS5346 ADC, Texas Instruments TPS7A47 and TPS7A33, ASMedia ASM1042A PCIe to USB 3.0 host controller, XMOS U11690C20 multi-core controller and finally several capacitors by Nichicon, WIMA and Panasonic.

Since according to EVGA the NU Audio Card is a primarily stereo card we performed our tests on the Edifier S1000DB multimedia speaker set, the Harman Kardon NOVA stereo speaker system and two surround sound systems via the S/PDIF output.