You probably have a realtek 1150 in your new motherboard. It's a solid chip and it's likely much newer than the chip on the Creative card. With that said, you probably just had bad settings enabled on the creative card, or just that the default audio equalizer settings on the Creative card are bad. That Creative card does have a 106 db snr while your new onboard sound card is likely much higher at something like 115+. If that makes a big difference, I can't tell you. I am using a cheap usb sound card with a 95 db snr and I don't feel like it's that much worse than the realtek card on my motherboard. It usually just comes down to how the equalizer is set up.

I would just use your onboard sound as its better on a technical level and it already has a good equalization.

Depends if you have to screw something into the backplate, the threads may be the wrong size.

The graphics look fine, I think you forgot what source games looks like.

Yeah it's a huge flop, but for amd they're fine since the cards are great at mining.

EDIT: Apparently they're bad at mining, getting some conflicting info.

Just play ranked multiplayer if you want a challenge. I generally like if single player games are more laid back.

You don't have to buy any operations. Just play enough casual until you can play competitive. Most often played maps are: dust2, cache, mirage, italy, cobblestone, overpass, and I'm likely forgetting a few. The only game mode that's played in competitive are the bomb plant modes, although you can queue for hostage rescue but it is not played much. You can play deathmatch in casual, just select it and queue for whatever maps you want to play.

You don't buy maps in cs:go.

Not totally sure between those two, but I believe Century Link is DSL but sometimes offers Fiber to the home. If they offer fiber, get that. Otherwise go with Cox as you'll get better speeds and latency with cable than VDSL2.

Just install Discord

Check out clevo's laptops. They offer the best price for the specs generally.

Input lag will depend on the monitor's circuitry not so much on the display. There are IPS panels with the same input lag as the fastest TN displays. What is different is the pixel response, but at this point it's so minor (I can't tell) on the 165 hz IPS displays that the only reason to go with a TN panel is to save money.