/diy/ - Do It Yourself

I have an electret mic that's a tad quiet when plugged directly into my PC unless I jack up the gain in windows settings, which introduces a lot of noise. Idea here is to amplify without contributing any noise so that I don't have to increase the gain in windows settings.

Is an NPN circuit like pic related going to perform better or worse than an lm386 circuit for a mic preamp? Which will have the least noise?
The circuit would be inline with a 3.5mm mic with the output feeding directly into my PC and the circuit will be powered by 5V from USB.

I'd like to make a amp with either the 386 or NPN(s) (or maybe a 741); I don't have any mic amp ICs on hand and don't feel like ordering some for such a simple project.