Newb here sound card issues

Ok I've been trying to fix this one my self for the past 3 or so hours and I think I've made things worse.
Just installed a fresh copy of Linux Mint 17.3 on to my laptop. I've got the graphics driver working great and every thing else is working just fine except for my audio drivers.
Went looking around on line plucked a few tutorials off of google followed them to the T even the Realtek's guide to install their audio drivers in to Linux.
I still have no sound and the volume control button on start bar is missing. [you know the one that looks like this <))) ].
Here is my audio chip
Realtek HD audio ALC282.

The laptop it self is a GIGABYTE P25W V2

Now when I'm run in Windows the audio won't work unless I have both the drivers and GIGABYTE's own SMART MANAGER application.

I'm trying to figure out what I possibly could be doing wrong here.

Have you tried using headphones just to see if you get sound out of them and have you fully updated your OS.

Yes on both. Fully updated the OS before installing the graphics drivers. And tried the head phones when I realised that the audio wasn't working.

when you type in sound to your mint menu do you get a sound application

Use a USB DAC. Mayflower Electronics has an excellent one and problem solved.

type this in a terminal:
aplay -l
that should list sound devices available for playback.
if it shows more than one device, copy and paste info here

can also try
alsamixer
if you can find your way about in that basic mixer, may just be that sound is muted

@nikgnomic
Here's what I got:
dan@dan-P25V2 ~$ aplay -l
aplay:device_list:268: no soundcards found...

I think I just screwed something up i'm going to try a fresh install again.

ok after a fresh install this is what i have
dan@dan-P25V2 ~ $ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC282 Analog [ALC282 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: ALC282 Digital [ALC282 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Also a new development with the new install.
The headphones work but not the speakers.

Any Ideas?

hdmi from graphics card is in default position 0, so some sounds like browser etc may not play via onboard

to change to using card:1 listed as default, try instructions at this page:
fix sound ubuntu14.04

realtek audio devices usually has level controls for both speakers and headphones, plus an auto-mute option where when headphones are plugged in, speakers are muted.
check audio levels for alsa -
alsamixer --card=1 --view Playback

Mint probably also has a gui mixer application to check mixer levels, but won't always show all control options and levels

default device is set to the headphones instead of the speakers.