No Sound On Gigabyte motherboard (GA-Z77X-UD3H) After Installing GFX Card

[t3ster12]

I recently removed my graphics card to clean the fans but after replacing the card & starting back up my sound is gone from both the rear panel and the front headphone jack. Plugging in the headphones gives a lot of static. I have a Gigabyte motherboard (GA-Z77X-UD3H) and am able to play sounds via HDMI. Here's what I've tried:

-updating the BIOS (Gigabyte recommended this before updating the VIA HD Audio drivers to "Fix audio function under Win7").
-updating the VIA HD drivers through Gigabyte
-updating the VIA HD drivers through VIA
-uninstalling/reinstalling the drivers.
-uninstalling/reinstalling the audio devices.

If I play around with the VIA HD software + Windows sound settings I can get very low quality sound from the left speaker (or left headphone).

I'm at a total loss here. Am I going to have to buy a sound card? Any thoughts/suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[autotech]

Did you check to make sure that your default sound is set to rear panel?

[t3ster12]

Yup, if by that you mean setting the "Speakers: Via High Definition Audio" as the default (it's the only listed playback source and iirc it was the one used prior to the loss of sound output). Thanks for the suggestion though--good tip!