Have long used a Creative sound card (avoiding the motherboard sound chip) feeding an external Yamaha receiver. The speakers are a pair of Optimus AV bookshelf units.
Whatever anybody thinks of Radio Shack, from 1978 through the 80's and into the 90's, for some miraculous reason, they created and sold an amazing speaker called the Minimus 7, which was of completely metal construction. I used them in many installations over the years, and still have pairs purchased in the 80's. They seem indestructible, and continue to provide great sound.
The Optimus AV variant are essentially the Minimus 7 with a magnetically shielded enclosure, which allowed them to be used directly under a CRT. That problem is obviously over with LCD units as monitors these days.
Some background here:
http://www.angelfire.com/vt/audio/minimus.html