I recently moved my 780i board into a new case, silverstone ft02.  It used to be in the antec 900.  Both cases have basically same front ports for audio and microphone.  I never got the mic to work in the antec 900, and now in the silverstone I can't get headphones or microphone to work.  I looked in the manual and it mentions there is both front and rear audio and I have it plugged in with the hd audio cable from the case.  It has ac97 coming off of that cable, but it is not plugged in.  So I just have the hd audio plugged into what I thought was the front audio connector.  I have my speakers plugged into the rear and they work fine, but if I plug a headset into the front connectors neither the headphones or microphone work.  Can anyone give me any suggestions?  Am I plugging into the wrong place on the motherboard? (I'm plugging into the circled pins on page 19 of the manual).  Do I need to do something in the bios?  Also, there is no errors in device manager.  Thanks in advance.

So... do I need to remove the hd audio connector and replace with the ac97 or do I need to plug the ac97 in somewhere else?  My headset is analog. 

I have the HD plugged in and it works fine.
Make sure you have the HD audio enabled in your bios.

What version OS are you running?
Vista picked up the HD audio device automatically for me, but I'm not sure what other OSes do.

Ok... there are 2 audio headers on the motherboard.


Notice how many pins the HD AUDIO header has compared to the FRONT AUDIO header.
The one labeled HD AUDIO is actually for an Intel Azalia connector and uses 15 pins (16 with one blocked out).
The Front Audio (AC97 style) header accepts a 9 pin connector (10 pin with one blocked out). 
They are totally different and not interchangable.
If your front panel connectors have both a 9-pin and 15-pin connector then you must pick one of them and not both.
Make sure you have the proper driver for your operating system. I'm guessing you probably don't have the 15-pin connector and just have two 9-pin connectors.
(My computer is that way and so are many cases. 15-pin connectors are not all that common.)
You can use EITHER ONE and you plug it into the FRONT AUDIO header. (My connectors are labeled AC97 and HD... I used the HD.)
Do -NOT- use both 9-pin connectors by attaching the AC97 one the FRONT AUDIO header and the 9-pin on the HD AUDIO Azalia header.
YOU WILL FRY YOUR MOTHERBOARD!!!  You have been warned!
9-pin headers do not belong on the Azalia header!!!

The main difference between the two different 9-pin connectors is that the HD connector has an extra wire or two that detects when you have plugged headphones into your front panel jack and Windows will automatically turn off your external speakers.
Standard AC97 does not do that as far as I know.

Yes, that is exactly correct I have two 9 pin connectors, 1 labeled ac'97 and one labeled hd.  I am using the hd connector and have it hooked up to the front audio connector, exactly where its circled in the picture above.  The ac'97 is not hooked up to anything.  I am running windows 7 x64 however I have not installed any special drivers for the audio, only what windows installed.  Do I need specific drivers?? where do I get them?

Thats the thing....the hd connector doesn't even have a mic label?  Is that normal or are they just calling it something else??? Do I have to use ac'97?? 

If you look at the actual wiring on the connectors you will see that all the wires on the AC97 connector match up exactly on the HD connector.  The difference is the extra wires on the HD for detection for when you plug stuff into the jacks.
Try the REALTEK drivers 'quadlatte' linked you to above.

Not running the realtek anymore so I am trying to remember what I did to get them to work. There was a setting in the audio manager, I think it was the folder icon you had to click and there were some settings in there that enabled me to get front headphone and mic working.