So I've got a really annoying issue with my PC lately. While playing games/watching youtube, etc. I noticed the sound would just stop in the left side of my headphones. At the time, my headphones were plugged into the front headphone jack on my computer case.

After buying new headphones and experiencing the same issue, (The old headphones had a crack in the wrapping around the wire which I ended up fixing), I tried plugging the old headphones into the back of the computer where the speakers are normally plugged in. They seem to work perfectly plugged in back there.


Normally I would just assume this means the front headphone jack is borked and order a replacement part or whatever, but I noticed that the sound from my left side speaker is incredibly faint.

Admittedly, my speakers are at least a decade old. And it might just be that the headphone sound issue brought the fact that the sound from the left speaker is faded to my attention. But I can't help but be paranoid, is it possible my soundcard has gone bad or something instead? (It's an onboard sound card, built right into the motherboard, which is relatively new.)

Basically, I'm just wondering if any of you have any advice for things I could try to nail down the problem further before I go and spend money on getting the part to replace the front headphone jack.

The computer case in case it matters is a Cooler Master Storm Enforcer.

Edit:
Update: It appears my speakers are fine after tweaking the volume on them, guess they really are just old.

Also, I figure I should put a TL;DR, so here goes.

Basically, besides my front panel headphone jack being glitchy, is there anything else that could cause my headphones to occasionally lose sound in the left ear when they work fine plugged into the back.