Don’t buy a motherboard with an on-board SoundMax card. While the audio quality is generally good when it works, it is susceptible to corruption (which can cause system lockups, depending on your configuration). Audio often becomes unsynched, both during recording and playback of movie and sound files. Furthermore, the microphone boost options are limited to a point where you essentially have “ear-damaging loud” and “whisper mode.” When I do use the boost, there’s so much background noise it’s ridiculous. This is likely due to the configuration of the motherboard or on-board card itself, but the fact the background noise seems to be amplified ten-fold higher than the sound from the actual microphone also tells me the drivers are completely stupid. You can get around these problems with a USB mic that has its own volume control, but you shouldn’t have to rely on such measures when dealing with hardware.

Avoid SoundMax like the plague. Especially if you want to record games using Fraps or other programs.

Edit: Also avoid Creative sound cards if you want to record using Fraps and other programs (though you can record if you get an 3.5mm splitter, connect the output to the line-in, and record directly from there).