Ok so im thinking of treating myself to a new aftermarket sound card. at the moment I use the onboard audio from my asus p8z77-v motherboard.....this I think is the realtek ALC892 chipset. I have a decent pair of speakers now and I want to invest in the future in a high quality headset as well so I want a decent card to drive these and to boost my sound quality overall.

I dont have a lot of room left in my case and I like the idea of having controls within easy reach so im thinking of an external usb soundcard/dac

The thing is theres so much choice out there and so many opposition reccomendations I cant make any headway into decided what would be best for me.

I want to use it for gaming(and im told creative are the best for this, usb scs like the omni and the xifi etc because of there software features) but I also listen to a lot of music on my desktop so it needs to be able to cope with sounding good for music as well(and im told the asus u5/ u7 etc are best for this) however im also wondering if it would be better to just ignore the usual `brands` for computing and go for a decent quality dac/headphone amp to run my speakers/headphone from. Im not `to` bothered about not having the gaming features and id be willing to sacrafice that for quality of sound overall.....so can anyone recommend me anything? sub £100 if possible. Ive been looking at dacs like the filio e10k as well as the creative/asus options.