Question Altername way to get 5.1 audio from pc to reciver?

[Dgrim]

First the hardware,
MSI Radeon 5700XT mech oc
Inno Geforce 1080 gtx ( currently in use)
MSI x370 sli plus motherboard
Onkyo HT-R398 Receiver
55" samsung 4k Curve smart tv

Ok, i will try and explain my situation to the best of my abilities. First I was connecting my PC to my audio receiver via HDMI 2.1 cable from RX5700XT video card to HDMI 2.1 Game port on Onkyo HT-R398 Receiver. Then from Receiver via HDMI 2.1 cable to 55" Samsung curv (Arc) HDMI Input. Problem is that it seems the RX5700Xt chips are defective and no matter what receiver you use you will experience intermittent split second audio drops. According to AMD this is a know issue and has been for over a year now with no solution in sight. My current remedy has been to take the rx5700xt out and put my much older Nvidia GTX 1080 card in and wha la no more audio drops. But I really want to use my RX5700Xt card so my question is. Is there a method to connect the pc to the receiver and get 5.1 audio without usint HDMI audio on the RX5700XT and connecting it directly to the display panel? The receiver does have a pc input but it looks like simple stereo rca left/right input. My motherboard has a reltek 7.1 sound card built in and I have optical output but from what I read optical is only 2.1? Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[americanaudiophile]

The optical output should be able to handle 5.1 just fine. You can check the audio control panel to make sure it's an option.
It will not handle lossless audio like Dolby TrueHD however your receiver may not be compatible with these audio codecs anyway so no loss of quality there.

 

[Dgrim]

EDIT: I just looked and I thought I had optical output on the back of the motherboard but I do not. So optical out IS out. All I have are separate 3.5mm output's for audio.

Oddly enough, trying to find the specs on my exact receiver is proving to be a nightmare. I live in Thailand and seems that when ever I make a purchase here I have not issue finding information on the items but as soon as I get the items I can never find the same information again. Though what I could find does not list dolby trueHD as a option the receivers UI does have Dolby TrueHD as a selection. That aside, if I connect the optical from the computer to the receiver it will then use the onboard sound card and not the video card and get 5.1 surround?
Right now I go from video card hdmi to game on receiver then from arc hdmi out to arc hdmi in on the tv. Everything works great with my Nvidia card in this configuration however as mentioned before and all over the AMD RX5700XT forums the hdmi audio is a chip level problem on the amd RX5700XT cards and you will get intermittent audio drops.