Hey guys,
The budget gaming headset video helped me out a lot, and I ended up going with the California Headphone Co. headset because at the time I looked it was down to $25. I also paired this with a modmic 4.0 (I honestly needed a mic more than headphones, the one I had been using was god awful).
The issue I've been having is that the modmic produces this weird background static noise constantly. I've used both the microphone jack on the front of my PC case and the jack directly on the motherboard, but it hasn't cleared up. I've looked around online-...and while typing this I remembered I had the front and rear set to +30dB because my old mic was awful. So that cleared up the issue.
EDIT: Yeah taking off the gain boost only fixed the issue temporarily, there is still a ton of static.
So I'm still interested in a budget sound card if it'll benefit me at all. Motherboard I'm using is an AsRock Extreme6 Z77.
Thanks :)