Good external 5.1 sound card?

Basically I'm looking at buying a Roccat Kave for gaming (which is a 5.1 surround sound headset).

As you might guess, my laptop doesn't have a built in 5.1 card, just a standard headphone and mic output.

So I'm looking for an external 5.1 card that'll support the Kave (3 audio connections and a mic connection). Either USB or ExpressCard, and preferably as affordable as possible. I'm in the UK so it will have to be available online on a UK website, preferably on Amazon UK as that's where I'll be ordering my Kave from most likely. There are several ones on there that I can find but as I've never actually purchased a sound card (either internal and external) and know nothing of what to look for, I need advice on what to buy. Obviously as the Kave is a very high quality (and expensive) headset I am looking for a quality sound card as well, not some cheap one that won't give the full quality I want, but at the same time I don't want to be spending all that much on one (something in the £20-£40 area would be great, as they seem to be the sort of price they go for on Amazon).

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

 

Doesn't the Kave have a USB plug? Is that only for power? I figured it could provide sound too.

I'd recommend the Creative Labs X-Fi USB sound card. I know someone with one and it is great.

Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 | Creative Labs Online Store

iXBT Labs - Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1

 

Yeah, the Kave's USB connection is purely to power the device. It might be able to provide sound through the basic connections in my laptop, but then what's the point of buying an expensive 5.1 headset in that case?

The Creative Labs X-Fi looks perfect however on Amazon UK at £60 it is a little more expensive than I'd hope. Still I presume it's only around £30 more than I was going to pay anyway and as I'm paying something around £120 in total anyway...

Still, is there anything slightly cheaper (on Amazon UK) that's just as high quality? If not I think I'll go for the Creative Labs X-Fi.

 

Without wanting to hijack the thread, is there a USB-based card that supports 24-bit 96KHz 5.1 over analogue, other than the X-fi Surround? It seems most of these USB solutions are 16-bit 48KHz, or 2.0 analogue/5.1 SPDIF.

 

Not that I'm aware off, there are some larger much more expensive pro-audio type solutions that do but they are 4-10 times the price.

 

Currently running a pair of Kaves off a X-fi 5.1 as its better then my laptops built in 5.1, driver support is crap from creative but the current batch seem ok. You won't be disappointed by the Kaves, the virbration function although sounding kinky actually does have a cinema feel about it.

 

Well then, in the interests of getting the highest quality, I'll be going for the Creative X-Fi external. The problem is that in the UK it's extremely expensive, £60, close to twice what it costs in the UK.

So all in all I'm paying £138 or so for the Kave and the X-Fi external. I really do hope it's worth it.

 

The only other option is the X-fi notebook the older one with 5.1 adaptor but it ends up eating a lot of space. The External X-fi 5.1 has no hardware chip so uses CPU power but ive never noticed any drop in performance.