Question hooking up a front panel and onboard sound

[Savage03]

Hi
I have a GA-P55A-UD3 mb and just got a new haf 922 case and want to use the front panel sound ports but confused as what to do or how to do it...I have a sound blasterX-Fi Xtreme Music  I would rather use but not sure it can be done? I know it cant be hooked directly cause the plugs dont match but if I plug the panel into the mb can it still work or do I have to use onboard sound? Wondering if the onboard sound is just as good as the sb anyways?
Any help would be appreciated.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.

Generally the sound quality from a dedicated sound card is better that that from the on board sound chip. They are much better nowadays than they used to be but still not up to the standard that can be expected form something like Creative cards.

The only problem is as you have discovered most sound cards don't have a connection for the front panel ports, but you need to disable the onboard sound to use the seperate sound card.