I was in a similar situation when I started my retro journey a few months ago. I ended up looking/asking around until I found someone with an old set they never threw out. They were happy to give them away rather than toss them.

Have you considered headphones? They will sound much better than unpowered speakers and take up even less room.

I do like the sound quality of headphones, but I try not to use any when gaming because I tend to get headaches when gaming with them for long periods of time. Plus if the wife is calling me and I can't hear her she gets all mad. 😜

I actually found the model of Creative speakers I had, SBS10. There are some floating around on eBay right now, although I'd rather trade for a set.

I can only offer some general info:

DamienC wrote:

• - Soundcards with amplifiers can use unpowered speakers
  - If it has a volume dial on the back it probably has an amplifier

True.

DamienC wrote:

The Aztech card I'm using has a dial so I'm assuming it has an amplifier and that I can buy unpowered speakers.

I'd bought this particular card back then new for my XT and yes, it had included unpowered speakers

I use CD bay speakers because I don't like speakers and their wires cluttering my desk.
They are powered by the PSU so no wall wart is required and the signal wire is also inside the case.
Obviously I don't care much about 'good' sound but they probably sound better than unpowered speakers.
Mine have a volume control right on the front which makes life easy.
Cyber Acoustics still makes them in both beige and black. I bought one just to see if they were better than mine.
IMHO the Cyber Acoustics model sounds a bit worse than the 15 year old generic ones I paid $6.99 for on sale.
Fortunately 15 years ago I bought 10 and as I keep them when I upgrade I still have some I haven't used.
I also tried two different Logisys models. Those look cool but the sound totally sucks. Sound like tin cans.
My old ones: http://www.ebay.com/itm/231798517000
The Cyber Acoustic ones: http://www.ebay.com/itm/161936781844
There are others I haven't tried.

Yes sound cards have amps but they aren't necessarily powerful enough to drive unpowered speakers.
Years ago I had some upowered speakers and IIRC they worked on some systems but not others.
I suspect they are intended for laptops. Not really sure.
.

Maybe you could buy 12V DC (not AC) powered speakers and instead of plugging power brick, you could take 12V from the molex plug of the computer's PSU :p

Going with adalbert's idea the bay speakers could be set on the desk and they already have the correct power connectors.
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I didn't even think of looking at the 5.25" bay speakers, although I knew they existed. I like this idea. Might pick up one of the Cyber Acoustic ones.

Maybe you could buy 12V DC (not AC) powered speakers and instead of plugging power brick, you could take 12V from the molex plug of the computer's PSU :p

The tinkerer in me really wants to do this and mount it in the side panel of the ATX case I'm using where a fan typically goes, but I don't feel like sourcing the parts. 😜 I already made a custom turbo LED & toggle switch.

I searched some pictures and it appears the sound card has a LM386 or JRC386 (same chip, different manufacturer) speaker amplifier chip, so it can drive a speaker directly. As it's a single channel amplifier, the output is monophonic, no stereo.

DamienC wrote:

I didn't even think of looking at the 5.25" bay speakers, although I knew they existed. I like this idea. Might pick up one of the Cyber Acoustic ones.

The reason these http://www.ebay.com/itm/231798517000 sound better than the Cyber Acoustics is that in addition to the two front speakers there is a 3 or 4 inch woofer in the top which if put in the top bay resonantes of the inside top of the case. You can see where it is in the pictures. It's where all those holes are in the top.

Sorry I didn't mention it earlier. I forgot about that little detail.
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Just FYI all the powered computer speakers I've ever used turn into unpowered speakers when you switch them off on the back of them, so you might already have a set of unpowered speakers you can try. (Note that you get no sound if they are switched on and the batteries are flat or the AC adapter is off, the speakers themselves have to have an off switch.)

As for sound quality, it's identical whether they are powered or not, just powered ones can go louder.

If you have 12V speakers, you can get a molex connector that sits in a PCI/ISA port bracket very cheap from dx.com as part of a SATA+power passthrough bracket. I have a few of those and it makes it very neat to get 5V/12V out of the PC case.

Malvineous wrote:

As for sound quality, it's identical whether they are powered or not, just powered ones can go louder.

Well, it depends....
I've seen my share of powered PC speakers that downmix stuff to mono (even though it is a 2-speaker set), but those are bottom of the barrel. Also, many old sound cards become very noisy when you use their built in amplifier. So it depends - you're better off with decent powered speakers if your sound card's own amp is noisy, but you can be fine with unpowered speakers otherwise.

alexanrs wrote:

Malvineous wrote:

As for sound quality, it's identical whether they are powered or not, just powered ones can go louder.

Well, it depends....
I've seen my share of powered PC speakers that downmix stuff to mono (even though it is a 2-speaker set), but those are bottom of the barrel. Also, many old sound cards become very noisy when you use their built in amplifier. So it depends - you're better off with decent powered speakers if your sound card's own amp is noisy, but you can be fine with unpowered speakers otherwise.

I have a decent pair of Gateway 2000 powered desktop speakers. Volume, bass, and treble knobs on the front and a headphone jack on the side of the right speaker (though it downmixes to mono). These speakers work fine on line out. Not much hiss, and the volume goes up enough. When they are on speaker out and using the sound card's amp, there is MUCH more hiss, but they do go significantly louder (and still sound good). What I ended up doing is keeping the Gateway 2000's on the line out and putting my Grado SR60's on the SB16's speaker out. Seems to be the best set up for what I've got.

All that to support your statement, alexanrs. 😀

PCBONEZ wrote:

Yes sound cards have amps but they aren't necessarily powerful enough to drive unpowered speakers.

I would say they are.
The output is either meant for line-level output or for headphones.
Line-out level is more than enough to drive headphones or speakers directly.
And unpowered speakers are usually either 4 or 8 ohms, which makes them more sensitive than most headphones (headphones tend to be in the range of 25-600 ohms). So if you can drive headphones at a decent level, unpowered speakers will work fine as well, as a rule of thumb.
In fact, these unpowered speakers became popular back in the days of the Walkman, where they were meant to be used on the headphones output of a Walkman.

I bought a set of Sony unpowered Walkman speakers many years ago, and I still use them on my Sound Blaster Pro 2.0. They can get pretty loud at full volume, those early SB cards had quite beefy amps.
My speakers are something like this:

Scali wrote:

PCBONEZ wrote:

Yes sound cards have amps but they aren't necessarily powerful enough to drive unpowered speakers.

I would say they are.

Not all of them.
I've had some that couldn't be heard at all through unpowered speakers.

PCBONEZ wrote:

Not all of them.
I've had some that couldn't be heard at all through unpowered speakers.

As I say, that is physically impossible if they can drive a line-in or headphones.
If you can't power speakers, then the output is broken, and you wouldn't be able to hear much via an amp or headphones either.
Unpowered speakers don't need a very strong signal to hear something.

Scali wrote:

As I say, that is physically impossible if they can drive a line-in

How exactly does a sound card -drive- its line-IN?

And what does a line-in have to do with speakers?

I stated my experience. That's what happened. You weren't there.
I don't particularly care if you had different experiences using different parts.
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PCBONEZ wrote:

How exactly does a sound card -drive- its line-IN?

The sound card's output (which is usually designed as 'multi-function', so both for headphones and line-out) has to drive the line-in of an amp obviously (should have been obvious, since I also mentioned headphones, which also aren't part of the sound card itself).

PCBONEZ wrote:

And what does a line-in have to do with speakers?

The signal levels of an industry standard line-in are specified, and are more than adequate to power a set of 4/8 ohm speakers to an audible level (sound cards have low-impedance solid-state amps).

So if your sound card can produce enough of a signal to make it work properly with the line-in of an amp, you will be able to hear it when you plug in headphones or speakers. These are simple facts in the realm of electronics. There's no point in arguing.

I've had motherboards that had onboard audio that was almost inaudible using headphones.

Anyway, as per the link you provided, line out is meant to be a low impedance output driving a high impedance input. A 600ohm output driving a 10ohm speaker means that most of the power will be dissipated on the card itself, drastically reducing signal strength.

alexanrs wrote:

Anyway, as per the link you provided, line out is meant to be a low impedance output driving a high impedance input. A 600ohm output driving a 10ohm speaker means that most of the power will be dissipated on the card itself, drastically reducing signal strength.

If you are talking about a pure, theoretical line-out circuit yes. But we aren't.
As I already said:

Scali wrote:

The sound card's output (which is usually designed as 'multi-function', so both for headphones and line-out)
...
(sound cards have low-impedance solid-state amps).

Please, try to keep up.

For example, taken from Creative's own FAQ...

Clearly the 'line out' is designed to be used with headphones as well, which are (usually) low-impedance, like speakers (which is why the concept of unpowered Walkman-speakers came about... plugging such speakers into a headphones output works fine. Headphones that come with a Walkman are usually very low impedance for better battery efficiency).