The speakers that came bundled with my PC sounded so bad that I thought the sound card was defective -- but the sound card is on the motherboard, so I decided to try these speakers instead.  The difference is simply amazing!  Not being a 'gamer, I did not want a 3-speaker system.  The sound quality from the Altec-Lansing's are as good as my boom box -- for general PC sound use, you can't go wrong with these...