I assume you are talking about specific to Rocksmith? Really any mid/high end motherboard should have a good enough soundcard on it already. The specs CPU wise for Rocksmith are pretty low, but an Intel i5 CPU would be good if you can afford it. If you want to go AMD and are happy to invest in a decent case with good airflow and aftermarket cooling, an FX8320 can't be beat for price (will run anything fine). I'm running this in my PC and it does run hot but I have a full size tower and some aftermarket fans and HSF attached to the CPU (depends on where you live, my computer rooms gets as hot as 35 degrees in summer so I need decent cooling). 4GB ram is the minimum, I would recommend at least 8GB as it that is the sweet spot and ram is cheap. On a PC latency for Rocksmith isn't really an issue, only if you are using HDMI and hooking that up to an amplifier/speakers. Just plug speakers/headphones into the speaker out on the motherboard and you should be good to go. Graphics card is an issue though, I find that if you have a lot of custom DLC installed you need a good graphics card to load all the textures for the artwork into ram. I'm using a R7 290, used to have a HD7950 which was also perfectly fine. Both of these cards are pretty expensive, I would probably recommend an Nvidia card instead like the 750Ti would be the minimum cheap option or any newer maxwell based Nvidia card. So cheapest option: Amd FX 8350Asus motherboard (SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 or ASUS M5A97 R2.0 AM3+)4GB DRR3 RamAny HarddriveNvidia 750tiGood Case and cooling (would need at least 400w PSU)If you want to play with price/performance I recommend logical increments (can help you source parts too): http://www.logicalincrements.com/ Rocksmith emulates instruments and although it does a good enough job mostly, it's not going to be 100% accurate compared to a real guitar, and some effects are going to be noticeably lacking on some songs. If you have high quality audio equipment you want to use with the PC you may want to look into a USB soundcard like the Fiio E17. I have read that some Rocksmith users have this setup and love the audio quality, but many aren't going to hear the difference. Of course if your question is more general to PCs and audio quality in general I would say get a USB soundcard, and if you are interested in midi input and recording from your Guitar look into some of the m-audio stuff (expensive but people love it). There are cheaper mobile iPad/iPhone options for this sort of things like the iRig HD. Lastly headphones are the best way (IMHO) to enjoy Rocksmith. I thoroughly love my Takastar Hi2050 headphones they are dirt cheap and sound as good as my other $250 headphones, but are far more comfortable. Perfect for a budget PC.