1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,200 There are plenty of products out there that promise to make your tech experience more reliable, 2 00:00:05,200 --> 00:00:10,400 more powerful, or more just high-quality and much gooder in general. 3 00:00:10,400 --> 00:00:14,960 And while many of them do exactly that, there's still plenty of snake oil out there 4 00:00:14,960 --> 00:00:19,920 that's about as effective as those, uh, supplements they sell on late night television. 5 00:00:19,920 --> 00:00:25,360 So let's go through three kinds of straight-up, useless tech you really should be avoiding. 6 00:00:25,360 --> 00:00:29,520 I'm sure number one will get a big eye roll from a lot of you before we even get into details. 7 00:00:29,520 --> 00:00:35,920 We're talking about fake audiophile gear. To be clear, we're not trying to pick on folks who are serious about sound, 8 00:00:35,920 --> 00:00:41,360 higher quality, headphones, amplifiers, and DACs do make a real difference in audio quality. 9 00:00:41,360 --> 00:00:47,360 But unfortunately, there are many products that sound cool without actually sounding cool. 10 00:00:49,600 --> 00:00:54,880 It's a pun. Two particularly egregious examples made the news in late 2021, 11 00:00:54,880 --> 00:00:59,200 an audiophile network switch and an audiophile SSD. 12 00:00:59,200 --> 00:01:02,240 The switch, manufactured by Synergistic Research, 13 00:01:02,240 --> 00:01:08,480 costs 2600 US dollars and claims to improve your audio quality by smoothing out electrical noise. 14 00:01:09,120 --> 00:01:14,080 Unfortunately, because switches only handle digital bits, ones, and zeros, 15 00:01:14,080 --> 00:01:17,200 there's no benefit to spending all that money to reduce interference, 16 00:01:17,200 --> 00:01:21,760 as the signal either goes through perfectly or it doesn't at all. 17 00:01:21,760 --> 00:01:26,080 In the event of a failed transmission, the switch would just try again and fetch the correct data, 18 00:01:26,080 --> 00:01:28,400 which has no impact on audio quality. 19 00:01:29,440 --> 00:01:36,000 It's a similar story with the SSD, which you can immediately tell looks quite different from your normal M.2 storage device. 20 00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:40,800 It comes with a real tech controller, possibly to imply improved sound quality, 21 00:01:40,800 --> 00:01:45,120 along with a couple of chunky capacitors that look like they belong inside an amplifier, 22 00:01:45,120 --> 00:01:49,680 and even an expensive oscillator meant for higher end scientific equipment. 23 00:01:49,680 --> 00:01:54,960 Very fancy. But again, nothing is going to improve the inherent quality of a song 24 00:01:54,960 --> 00:02:00,880 stored on discrete bits, or give it a special natural feeling as the developer claims. 25 00:02:00,880 --> 00:02:06,000 The only thing this SSD will improve is the manufacturer's bank account whenever it goes on sale. 26 00:02:06,000 --> 00:02:10,720 Speaking of SSDs, let's move on and talk about SSD water cooling. 27 00:02:11,280 --> 00:02:15,920 Yeah, you might have noticed that many motherboards these days include small passive heat sinks for 28 00:02:15,920 --> 00:02:19,280 M.2 SSDs, and some SSDs even come with their own. 29 00:02:19,280 --> 00:02:28,640 You know, fair enough, SSDs do get hot, and it's a positive for them to receive adequate cooling, but the key word here is adequate. 30 00:02:28,640 --> 00:02:33,760 You see, SSDs only suffer performance and endurance problems when they're facing temperature 31 00:02:33,760 --> 00:02:40,640 extremes, either hot or cold. Fortunately, you can usually keep your SSD in an acceptable temperature range simply 32 00:02:40,640 --> 00:02:46,800 by ensuring your case has good airflow and isn't being choked by dust or a scorned lover. 33 00:02:46,800 --> 00:02:51,360 And yeah, you might want a little heat sink on there if you're dealing with warm ambient temperatures. 34 00:02:51,440 --> 00:02:57,040 But this hasn't stopped some manufacturers from creating water blocks specifically for SSDs, 35 00:02:57,040 --> 00:03:01,040 and while there's nothing wrong with putting one on your drive for some extra glam, 36 00:03:02,320 --> 00:03:06,960 it's almost certainly going to do nothing to improve the speed or lifespan of your SSD 37 00:03:06,960 --> 00:03:14,160 over a passive cooler or just a fan that's pointing at it. So don't bother spending the money and the hassle to water cool your SSD. 38 00:03:14,160 --> 00:03:18,560 There are plenty of other components in your rig that could benefit from water cooling instead. 39 00:03:18,560 --> 00:03:22,720 Finally, let's talk about one kind of item you may have been tempted to buy during the GPU 40 00:03:22,720 --> 00:03:31,680 shortage, low-end graphics cards. You know, the ones like the NVIDIA GT730 that take up one slot might have one dinky little fan 41 00:03:31,680 --> 00:03:39,040 and don't even have an X anywhere in the name. Seriously though, the only real reason to get one of these guys is if you need an extra video out, 42 00:03:39,040 --> 00:03:42,800 and even then, it's cheaper just to get a USB to HDMI dongle. 43 00:03:42,800 --> 00:03:47,280 But what's really egregious is that you often see these cards marketed as a way to run 44 00:03:47,280 --> 00:03:53,520 graphically intensive modern games. Not only is the actual performance you get incredibly weak, but in some ways, 45 00:03:53,520 --> 00:03:59,040 it's even worse than integrated graphics. And they're typically not much cheaper than buying something a tier higher 46 00:03:59,040 --> 00:04:02,160 that can actually give you a respectable gameplay experience. 47 00:04:02,160 --> 00:04:08,880 The kicker is that NVIDIA has sometimes rebadged very old low-end GPUs to make them seem newer. 48 00:04:08,880 --> 00:04:13,600 The GT430 and the GT730 are actually the same chip. 49 00:04:13,600 --> 00:04:19,600 Yet you can still buy the GT730 now, despite the fact that the GPU is 11 years old! 50 00:04:20,240 --> 00:04:25,680 It should be going into fifth grade! Have you seen a piece of tech that would function better as a paperweight? 51 00:04:25,680 --> 00:04:29,520 Let us know down in the comments and you might see it in a follow-up episode. 52 00:04:29,520 --> 00:04:33,440 Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy an overclockable power supply. 53 00:04:33,440 --> 00:04:39,200 Really just want to crank it out. Yeah, get the vroom vroom's going, you know?