That should be possible, however, you'd forfeit the analog MIC. The Realtek driver suite allows you to reassign the analog jacks, so one is left right, another for center and sub and then the last jack you would use for rear left/right. Then for MIC use the internal HD AUDIO connector to your chassis connector. Not ideal though that though work. Depending on your receiver, the easier thing would be using HDMI, and use the SPDIF passthrough for Dolby/DTS 5.1

Thank you HH! 🙂

@AzzKickr Have you considered picking up an external sound card like a Xonar U7 MKII, External, 7.1 channels?

igorfiuza:

It really keeps me wondering why most of manufacturers just decided that nobody needs SPDI/F anymore. Pass-through HDMI sucks most of times, and multi channel setup in Windows via HDMI sucks even harder. I really hope they don't ditch optical out for good. Even some Z370 and X470 boards don't have it anymore.

I agree with you but also in these day it's hard to find an amp with optical in or out... even on specialised brand. it's the end of an era

igorfiuza:

It really keeps me wondering why most of manufacturers just decided that nobody needs SPDI/F anymore.

The ease of use of SPDIF optical is fantastic, however, it is a limited connector, the bandwidth cannot transport anything more than Dolby and DTS 5.1. With audio moving towards DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD, Atmos etc you will need HDMI.

I noticed that eventhough there's SPDIF out, they don't have DTS connect or Dolby Digital support. Only certain high and MBs have them.

this is a fantastic value...and i hope to God they keep the specs as is. the M.2 heatsink is a real winner, now you can buy an M.2 without its own heatsink and save $15-25. which is big at this price point. also nobody needs x470 in a itx build unless you're doing massive storage and need the extra sata/ M.2's