There are three increasingly expensive solutions to this problem, which I dispatched in about 2001 in my setup.

1. Once you've followed Mac's advice, go to Radio Shack and buy extension cables for each of the audio ports that you use from your card and bring them around to the front of your computer. You might have to use some ingenuity in connector selection and so forth, but actually, a simple headphone extension cable should work for 3.5mm stereo connections that are the norm for headphone and mic jacks.

2. If you are using Win XP that has an empty 5.25" drive bay and blank panel in the case, consider picking up one of the 'platinum' series of SB Live or Audigy cards that have a front panel that mounts in a drive bay. I used an SB Live Platinum card for 5 or 6 years regularly, with perfectly fine sound quality - always connected on the front drive bay connector panel.

3. Ditch the PCI card based sound card or MOBO connections for a USB or FireWire (I would recommend USB these days - Firewire becomes increasingly rare) external audio/midi device.

That was my journey. Now I use a Tascam US-800, which after working out the kinks with the drivers, has turned out to be quite a very nice piece of gear. I use it with a Laptop. I've found that you can actually get a more usable combo out of a laptop and one of these kinds of devices. Make recordings just about anywhere. Not locked into the 'studio'. My laptop I got on clearance at Best Buy for under $450 and the US 800 was $99. I would be hard pressed to get the same combination in a desktop configuration as the US 800 has 6 nice and clean mic preamps on board. I also know that I need to plan on the laptop dying an early death compared to a desktop. That seems to be a trend.

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