 So back when I was in like high school, Creative Lab's Sound Blaster was basically synonymous with high performance, high quality gaming PC audio. And they're making a comeback! But hold on, Linus. Everyone knows an external amp and DAC is the best solution today. This new flagship sound card is dead on arrival. No, you hold on, smartypants. This time, it's different. This sound card has built-in RGB lighting. This sound card is ready to compete in 2017. The ProTrek Smart from Casio features Android 2.0, energy-efficient GPS functionality, water resistance up to 50 meters, and more. Check it out now at the link below. So in a nutshell, the Sound Blaster XAE5 is Creative Lab's latest attempt to marry a great DAC chip, the ESS Sabre 329018, and a great amplifier circuit to a form factor that's convenient for PC users if a little unfamiliar to the younger generation. So taking a peek under the EMI shield, we are greeted by the Sabre DAC right there in the middle, as well as, this is interesting, all the main capacitors are high-quality WIMA films and, interestingly, while the rear jacks are all grounded to the bracket, the headphone jack is the one exception. It's grounded internally to reduce crosstalk with the rest of the outputs. Cool. Of course, it's not quite as impressive looking as the inside of a MoD2 and Magni 2, a popular standalone stereo DAC and amp combo that enjoys the usual advantages of these solutions, particularly very low interference thanks to widely spaced PCB components, not to mention being outside the computer case. We did notice, though, that Shit Audio's products used fewer film capacitors and more giant electrolytics. And we also noticed that they have boring white LEDs on the front, versus Creative's homegrown Aurora Reactive Lighting System, which is basically individually addressable RGB lighting, on yet another damn separate piece of software to install, alongside Aura Sync, Corsair Link, and Razer Chroma. That and what a missed opportunity this is. It doesn't even have a music reaction mode. So we'd recommend just ham-fisting the proprietary connector on the included strip onto an ASUS header and otherwise ignoring it. I mean, this is supposed to be a sound card, not an RGB controller card. Like, I'm having flashbacks to when they started putting Firewire ports and, like, joystick ports onto sound cards. Come to think of it, that was also Creative. So then, the main attractions in Creative's software package are the Blaster X acoustic engine and Scout 2.0. Most of the acoustic engine is Creative's usual fare. Surround, Crystallizer, Bass, Smart Volume, and Dialogue Plus. Crystallizer can help with compressed streaming audio, and, while Dialogue Plus sounds weird for music, it can help with other types of content. I would leave the rest of them off, but those two can be kind of useful. Scout 2.0, on the other hand, completely worthless. It didn't give us better spatial awareness than the conventional surround setting, and even worse than that, Scout Radar, this phone app that, if it did work, would be cheating anyway, was both distracting, because you have to look off-screen to see it, and horribly inaccurate, picking up our own footsteps and ambient sound in CSGO as a blip straight ahead, and usually failing to register another player until they were within a few digital feet. Relying on this thing would be a great way to boost your being-knifed-to-kills ratio. So how about sound quality, then? Well, Anthony grabbed a selection of headphones off of our headphone wall, along with the aforementioned Magni 2 and Modi 2, and got to work, using a Maximus 9 code as a third comparison source to represent good motherboard audio. So early on in the testing, it became clear that both the AE-5 and Asus Supreme FX can drive even notoriously difficult to drive planar dynamic headphones like the Audeze LCD 2s and the 250-ohm Beyerdynamic DT990 Pros, and both of them at uncomfortable listening volumes, even. Unsurprisingly, though, so does our Magni and Modi combo, which is good, because that's the entire reason it exists. So everybody's a winner, so far. Audio quality was a different story. Even without the surprisingly easy-to-use, draw-it-the-way-you-wanted EQ, highs are crisper and lows are smoother than our onboard audio, which is especially apparent in electronic music, where high-pitched cymbals and snare drums sound notably coarse by comparison. Rock and metal sound significantly less noisy, which is to say that everything doesn't devolve into a mess of riffs and cymbals, as happens with lower quality outputs, and meanwhile, symphonic music sounds quite a bit smoother and fuller. With that said, comparing the AE-5 to our only slightly more expensive shit, it comes pretty close. Both of them are a significant improvement over onboard, and I'd say the edge, especially in quieter passages, goes to shit. Now, obviously, the AE-5 has the advantage of not taking up any additional desk space. That is to say, as long as your MO isn't to take it and put it on a desk in front of you and talk about it to a camera. It also, though, has a one less obvious drawback, that is, unless you want to use your case's often very poorly shielded front panel audio jacks, you'll need a long headphone cable to plug into the dedicated headphone jack on the rear I.O. So bottom line, then. Once upon a time, filling up all your expansion slots was like the mark of a baller system, and that's not lost on me here. What is, though, is the fact that something like this has one very specific purpose, to be plugged into a compatible computer. Meanwhile, external sound solutions are more versatile. DACs are usually driverless and cross-platform, and amps can be plugged into virtually anything with an output. So I guess the answer then boils down to how much you value three things. Creative software, including, yes, the RGB controls, their 7.1 surround support, and whether you're like into filled up PCIe slots. Anker's power delivery charging enables faster and safer charging as well as more power for your larger devices, and USB-C connectors are super handy because they allow you to use the same cable to charge your smartphone, tablet, and even a supported laptop with no separate power brick required. So today we're looking at two products with these features, the PowerCore Plus 26800, as well as the PowerPort Speed PD30. Both of them have a USB-C port that can deliver up to 30 watts, as well as up to two regular USB ports. They've got hard-wearing matte exteriors. This one's made of aluminum, which is pretty nice, with high gloss detailing and these kind of cool blue USB ports to provide a sleek look. The foldable plug and compact size means that you can take them with you wherever you want to go, and you can check them out through the links in the video description. So thanks for watching, guys. If you disliked this video, you know what to do. But if you liked it, hit the like button, get subscribed, check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description. Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one, and our community forum, which you should totally join.