The topping dacs hooked to active monitors or amps speakers generally get good reviews and some of the models are reasonably priced for someone who wants stereo audio. I started off using a Topping D-30 then went on to something else but I still keep it as a backup.
For a stereo amp for headphones the Massdrop THX AAA 789 has lots of power and is a good amp.
Could also just get a headphone amp and run it from your motherboard out, then get a nicer DAC down the road.
Schiit Magni is an option, Liquid Spark, JDS Atom Amp, etc.
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I had the v1 of that card and I did notice that it did seem to make some games sound “better” or maybe just different compared to my external dac.
But what I think was actually happening is when you have it set to 8 or 6 channels even if you have the virtual surround stuff off the drivers are still tricking games (particularly ones that lack audio options) into using their surround mix by default instead of the stereo mix then recombining it into stereo.
So it can in some games sound different but its not really the card making it sound “better”. Its just the game audio probably having had more work put into the surround mix than the stereo mix.
In games where the legwork was put in, “headphone mode” often makes quite the difference. Whether that difference sounds better or worse is up to everyone to decide for themselves.
Leaving Surround-Downmix to a proper audio device instead of the “left it on Auto, boss” game-engine also helps with titles where audio only made the nice-to-have list.