The attached mp3 clip below was recorded with an Shure SM57 dynamic mic (similar sensitivity to the PodMic) using a Hosa XVM-115f XLR to 1/8" TRS mono cable (the mono signal is on both the tip and ring of the TRS plug. I use this cable for the stereo ins of a camcorder occasionally), into an ASUS desktop with a ASUS/RealTek motherboard 'soundcard' (low end quality). Mic was about 1" to 1.5" from my mouth. There are settings in the ASUS sound software that I boosted the gain to a +20dB range. The clip was recorded in Audacity and I did 'normalize' the levels to bring them up a bit. The room was fairly noisy with a fan going and traffic in the road going by. A more expensive gaming card will likely not provide much improvement over what I did. A gaming card is not optimized for use with a dynamic microphone such as the PodMic or similar.
Couple questions....
- What is the intended use for the mic? Singing, voiceover, etc?
- What are you using for a DAW (recording software)?
- The 'PC' you mentioned, is it a desktop or a laptop? If a laptop, the MIC input is sometimes a combo jack that takes a mic & headphone (TRRS) and will not play well with standard 1/8" TRS connection plugged into it.
- When you tried the Creative Sound Blaster Play 3 USB thingy, did you have this device selected in the DAW as your recording device. I'm guessing it doesn't need drivers to function correctly(?) If Win10 is the OS you may need to check and change some privacy settings to enable a USB mic connection...
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4468232/windows-10-camera-microphone-and-privacy