Sucks about onboard audio dying; hate when things like this happen on a new build.
Unfortunately I can't make recommendation on your proposed setup, but as an alternative, have you considered getting soundcard as an alternative? The basic ones are ~$20 where I live.
Are you sure that a soundcard needs weird software to work? With just the drivers you should just have working sound output via the soundcard ports. I could be wrong as I haven't had a soundcard in a very long time.
Could be annoying, but you may be able to only install the drivers and avoid the bloatware. I do that with Nvidia, I only have the drivers, not Geforce experience or whatever.