Best Budget PC Speaker Systems

Creative Inspire t6100 5.1, $67.98 – $79.99 (buy it now)

There’s thrifty, and then there’s cheap. Thankfully, the Inspire T6100, hailing from the same company that brought us the SoundBlaster sound card and a whole whack of prior speaker systems of reasonable quality, falls into the camp of the former. Don’t expect this – or any – sub-$100 5.1 speaker setup to blow you away with oodles of power or audio purity, and certainly we would have preferred a handheld remote to the system’s satellite-mounted controls, but in our opinion, this and the Logitech X-540 (featured elsewhere in this wrap-up) are the only sub-$100 5.1 surround sound units worthy of your consideration. The only question: Is positional audio important enough for you to forsake the added quality you’ll find in many sub-$100 2.1 systems?