This hasn’t crossed my mind in decades. Not even in a “remember when” sense.

You should still buy sound cards as they are significantly better, at least the ones in the 100€ range. Just because there are premium mainboards with acceptable sound doesn't mean it is great.

My fairly modern computer, originally released in 2014 (yes, that's modern compared to a lot of the computers I own), has no sound card.

I picked up a Yamaha AG06, which has a USB connection and creates both audio inputs and audio outputs to/from my PC. I can quickly plug in my phone or a Bluetooth receiver (which my phone connects to), and get other audio into my headphones with very little trouble. I prefer it this way, and if my next PC has onboard audio, I'll probably disable it in favor of the AG06.

We had floppy drives but they started making the disks rigid! Rigid!!! If only we could go back to the good old scuzzy times....

I still use my external soundblaster to connect to my 5.1 amp. I have HDMI to my TV and then toslink to my amp, but it was inconvenient having to have the TV on for listening music.

My best friend gave me his sound blaster after upgrading to the Pro. Later I upgraded to a Gravis Ultrasound. Offloading sound processing to the sound card (1MB) improved gaming performance significantly.

Got a second hand ISA interface SoundBlaster 64 at a computer fair in San Diego when I was visiting there for the best summer of my life in 1998. If I remember correctly it was $4.

Money well spent.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Soundblaster. They have that stupid card a Transformer name and none of us ever questioned it.

Pro Audio Spectrum 16 gang represent.

The GUS for the win!

I still like Xonar cards, like the Xonar DG (though it isn't compatible with my new PC). I always liked their interface more than the competitors, and it puts out excellent volume on my Logitech headset that is otherwise way too quiet for me. Never been a big fan of the simulated 3D environments on any of these cards, though. The only game it ever sounded decent in was No Man's Sky, but even that still had a distant tinny sound to it.

I think most people just use external amplifiers these days, but I'm still using a third-party sound card.

Or turtlebeach or adlib or proaudio spectrum...