Onboard sound

You'll have to try to see if the quality of the sound is good enough.
If it isn't you can easily disable the onboard sound in the BIOS and put in another sound card.

My case has so many fans that it hovers above the ground .

onboard sound card involve sound poor quality.
you can disable it & replace it with an add-on sound card.
for a little investment around 35$, you can improve the sound quality with this add-on.

i don't know what are the speakers you bought but they are also important for a correct sound.
don't buy too poor quality speakers otherwise your add-on sound card willn't give you its best performance/quality.


if you know you don't know, the way could be more easy.

I must say the CMI 8738 onboard sound chip is excellent. Comes in 2 flavors...4.1 or 5.1 channels. Listening to Jethro Tulls "Heavy Horses" on JBL computer speakers with subwoofer as I type this. Very nice!

I want to die like my Grandfather...in my sleep...not screaming in terror like his passengers.

you think you are an audiophile because of your $300 speakers ?

do you know how much cost a "little" high-end hifi ?

the firt prices are about $1000-$1500 for each element of.

tcd/dac/preamp/amp/"speakers"


if you know you don't know, the way could be more easy.

If all ur gonna do is listen 2 ur MP3's u've dumped off the internet, and ur not a fussy listener, then ur ob snd will b fine with ur little speakers. However if ur looking for something a little better, without a great deal of outlay, I'd recommend Creative's Live 5.1. It'll cost u about 40 bucks (I think... I'm from Australia, there's about AU$2.00/US$1.00). Then if u decide ur speakers are holding u down you can go spend $100 on something more decent.

Another thing u may want to consider is CPU usage. If u've got an old system then ur snd card may make a great difference to system performance, I know it does to my PI133 laptop!!! El Cheapo cards would be less efficient I'm guessing, but... you get what u pay for (most of the time...hopefully). ...Hmmn, I read about a card from Phillips that was supposed to be pretty efficient...

But if u've got a PI266 CPU or better then u'll have absolutely no worries whatsoeva.

I'm planning on putting up with AC'97 ob snd, pumped through my Phillips stereo speakers until I've saved up for an Audigy and a set of Hercules XPS 510 speakers ....hmmm, yeah....

It's alive!!! hahahahaha!!!