If you don't mind paying a few extra bucks, I recommend getting an actual sound card instead of using the motherboard sound. The sound on my first motherboard (before the capacitors went bad) was OK, but definitely fell short of spectacular. The only complaint I have about my ASUS motherboard is that its on-board sound SUCKS! I have an Altec Lansing 2.1 speaker set and when it was plugged into the motherboard's sound, I only got sound out of the left speaker and NOTHING out of the sub-woofer. I bought a Soundblaster Audigy2 card on ebay for $50 last year, and it works great.