As a fuzzy rule, external USB equipment is better only because it’s further away from the computer. Computers generate a lot of electrical noise. Try operating a portable radio next to your computer.
We reviewed several USB devices…
https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/sound-card-reviews/8375/1
I have a formal if small sound mixer and a Mac, so none of this applies to me. Each of the Windows Elves has a favorite way to record live microphones. They’ll be along.
You do need to worry about phantom power which is a usually completely foreign concept for a newbie. The microphone sends its tiny sound signal down the cable to the USB thing, or the mixer, or the computer. Nothing strange there. Phantom Powered microphones require the computer/device/mixer to send battery back up the cable – effectively the “wrong way” – to run the microphone. You have to match them. If your microphone requires phantom power, then your sound device is required to provide it.
It’s called phantom power because they use an electronic trick to make it so the battery supply going one way and the sound going the other on one cable don’t interfere with each other. Each is a phantom to the other.
Koz