Gadgetory

now this is a little guide that I've been meaning to do for a while this is Anna soos zonar Zen sir since whatever you prefer to call it I'm going to call it since for the sake of pronouncing and how I feel it should be pronounced 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 special edition headset which uses the larger Jack's for both the microphone as well as the headphones here's your standard 7.1 channel audio out our brother 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 when I what I talked about a lot in the tech tips episode was the importance of a headphone amp for getting the most out of your sound 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 be integrated out that's why it needs a molex power connector even though it's a sound card we're going to be changing the op amps so seuss had a like a special little program a little while back where they were offering a free an upgrade for the zone our essence sts TX and the Zins so here I have my my op amps here these are the replacement ones and I'm going to be walking you guys through the procedure of changing the op amps on your zone our Zen's 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 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 hard core of an audio buff so I wouldn't know the difference between these and other op amps so hopefully you guys can see that pretty well okay so I'm just going to be showing you guys the the hardware aspect of installing the stock s seuss op-amp upgrade kit so I'm doing the screws now 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 / EMI blocker / heatsink I don't know what it is but it looks like it's also attached to the PCI bracket here so that's one more screw there we go looks like this is the same kind of screw so should be no problem to remember which ones go where okay it is not a heatsink 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 at the insides of the zone our card that we're using here so hmm this might actually be kind of challenging because I'm having a little bit of trouble getting my 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 hmm 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 gonna pry them up a little bit here look that was easy there we are just going to pull these guys up whoo they jumped around look at that little bedbugs beefy people 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 lives 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 oh he's stuck Oh hmm 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 you've 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 I got it guys just needed to give it a little bit more pressure and there you go it is now firmly seated so you just want to check both sides ah 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 now you are and now we'll go ahead and put in our other one being sure to put it in the correct orientation let's squeeze the legs closed a little bit because I know this 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 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 ones quite in the right place actually hmm okay let's try pulling up the first one this is the problem with doing guides when you haven't actually done something before okay so there you have it but 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 on the plastic housing around the op-amps lot so now it is figured out they are both in firmly and securely so all that's left is to further shroud back on and enjoy the upgraded sound quality remember these pieces are the ones that are actually going to determine the overall 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 on Linus tech tips don't forget to subscribe for more unboxings guides reviews and other computer videos