Got the speakers, Have a problem

[TheGreatSatan]

I bought the Z-5300e's from the hot deals forum from Newegg. They came today and upon packing it found a problem. It has 3 inputs for the computer which are green, black and orange. Here's the problem, my computer only has a green input. It onboard sound, not a sound card. I never put in a sound card because my mobo is Micro ATX and after I installed the 8800GTS there was only 1 PCI slot left. It's still empty because if I put something there the Vid Card will not have room to cool. Should I put a Snd card in anyway......What to do

[Luke122]

I ran into a similar problem with my Altec Lansings. On the subwoofer, there was actually a switch to change them to a 2 channel input. Once I did that, I just plugged in the green plug and all was well. Your speakers may have a similar function.

Alternately, some mobo's have the option of using the blue and red plugs as outputs also if switched by software. Check the manual for your motherboard.

[crenn]

What motherboard do you have? I thought most motherboards had built-in 5.1

[TheGreatSatan]

It's an ECS k8m890m-m

[calumc]

you can get usb sticks that will give you 5.1 gimme a min and il dig up a link

Ok my mistake they will only give you ''virtual 5.1'' on a 2 channel output. maybe you could look into an external soundcard?

[AKA_RA]

My guess is that the colors simply dont match up. you likely have a 6-channel onboard sound card. if this is true, there should be an option somewhere that lets do things like plug your rear channel speakers into the aux input channel(usually blue on my mbs) and the sub/center channel into the mic input(usually pink).

Worst case scenario, you get a 3 way splitter from radio shack and plug them all into the main output

[Luke122]

M-Audio makes external usb soundcards also... I had a Sonica Theatre once.. 7.1

Was decently priced too.. about $100 USD when I got it 3 years ago. The only problem I had was that I couldnt run my webcam and sound at the same time, due to limitations of the usb on my old laptop. (Not usb 2.0)

[.Maleficus.]

Looking at the ECS website, you at least have 6-channel audio (5.1).

From the tiny picture of the board, you have a pink, blue, and green port. Try plugging in just the green, go into the audio setup program, and set it to 5.1. There will probably be a diagnostic utility, so run that. For my Audigy 2, it cycled through the speakers, sending a beep out of each one. If you don't hear any from some of the speakers, plug the other wires in to the blue and pink ports. I think most of this will just have to be plugging in things and trying it out.

[Crazy Buddhist]

mal is absolutely right. your board can run this

Specifications:

• Model: ECS K8M890M-M AMD Socket AM2 Motherboard (RETAIL)
• Item No: C3595
• General Features:
  • Socket AM2
  • VIA K8M890 & VT8237R+ Chipset
  • Realtek ALC655 6-Channel Audio

however reading this you might want to consider an external soundcard - someone mentioned firewire ones recently I think ??? because RealTeks codec doesn't handle positional sound too well. experiment along the lines mal suggested and see how it sounds. you will need the realtek drivers and "SoundRack" I think it is called - their sound manager program installed - it lets you set up the output sockets.

[Omega]

Plug in the green.

Turn on the speakers.

Make sure the "matrix" is turned on OR the switch on the subwoofer is set to "2" (it's channels). It won't be true surround, but it'll still be really good and you'll get noise from all channels.

=]