How do they work? These days when building a computer system, most people are interested in the specs of the mainboard. After all it is the main component that connects every other component inside the enclosure. It solely determines what type of CPU and RAM you will be using, and what space you have available for additional components. Not many are concerned much with the audio specs as these days they are pretty much well integrated into many new motherboards and come standard with a minimal of 6 channels unless you buy a very cheap integrated board which will at least have stereo sound. The sound chip is usually made by one of the major semiconductor SoC vendors like Realtek, Creative or Intel and is integrated on the board and has external ports for device attachment. Various types of audio ports on motherboards When connecting audio hardware like a speaker system, microphone or Tape/CD recorder to a PC, one of four ports can be used which are: