If you play competitive FPS a good setup can increase your performance in game dramatically, as it's much easier to plot the positions of enemies by the sound of their footsteps. Not the mention the immersion factor of crisp bulletfire and explosions.

For build quality my vote goes to the Razer Carcharius. Went through two of them in 6 months, both exact same fault where one drum would fail and the mic would go at the same time. After the hassle it was to get a replacement pair under warranty I just couldn't be bothered the second time...

Hmm, well going by StaticIce (pricematching for australian PC retailers) the cheapest is $208 AUD, which is approx 169 US. I had a look on eBay as well as it's not much better, there's a grand total of 5 auctions for it and they're all US $170+, and that's not including huge postage charges...

Given that both of those are at least $180+, is it really worth it for a mid range set of phones like the HD555s? The other option is I was considering upgrading my motherboard as it's the oldest component in my PC, and I could easily pick up one with a higher quality onboard card.

Hope you guys don't mind if I jump in on this thread for my first post, I'm planning on picking up a pair of HD555's off ebay for ~$93 USD (and doing the foam mod), and I'm wondering what's a fairly cheap (<$100) sound card that'd be a good fit for gaming and music. Alternatively, is it worth...