WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.200 There are plenty of products out there that promise to make your tech experience more reliable, 00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:10.400 more powerful, or more just high-quality and much gooder in general. 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 00:00:14.960 --> 00:00:19.920 that's about as effective as those, uh, supplements they sell on late night television. 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. 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. 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, 00:00:35.920 --> 00:00:41.360 higher quality, headphones, amplifiers, and DACs do make a real difference in audio quality. 00:00:41.360 --> 00:00:47.360 But unfortunately, there are many products that sound cool without actually sounding cool. 00:00:49.600 --> 00:00:54.880 It's a pun. Two particularly egregious examples made the news in late 2021, 00:00:54.880 --> 00:00:59.200 an audiophile network switch and an audiophile SSD. 00:00:59.200 --> 00:01:02.240 The switch, manufactured by Synergistic Research, 00:01:02.240 --> 00:01:08.480 costs 2600 US dollars and claims to improve your audio quality by smoothing out electrical noise. 00:01:09.120 --> 00:01:14.080 Unfortunately, because switches only handle digital bits, ones, and zeros, 00:01:14.080 --> 00:01:17.200 there's no benefit to spending all that money to reduce interference, 00:01:17.200 --> 00:01:21.760 as the signal either goes through perfectly or it doesn't at all. 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, 00:01:26.080 --> 00:01:28.400 which has no impact on audio quality. 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. 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:40.800 It comes with a real tech controller, possibly to imply improved sound quality, 00:01:40.800 --> 00:01:45.120 along with a couple of chunky capacitors that look like they belong inside an amplifier, 00:01:45.120 --> 00:01:49.680 and even an expensive oscillator meant for higher end scientific equipment. 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:54.960 Very fancy. But again, nothing is going to improve the inherent quality of a song 00:01:54.960 --> 00:02:00.880 stored on discrete bits, or give it a special natural feeling as the developer claims. 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. 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:10.720 Speaking of SSDs, let's move on and talk about SSD water cooling. 00:02:11.280 --> 00:02:15.920 Yeah, you might have noticed that many motherboards these days include small passive heat sinks for 00:02:15.920 --> 00:02:19.280 M.2 SSDs, and some SSDs even come with their own. 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. 00:02:28.640 --> 00:02:33.760 You see, SSDs only suffer performance and endurance problems when they're facing temperature 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 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. 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. 00:02:51.440 --> 00:02:57.040 But this hasn't stopped some manufacturers from creating water blocks specifically for SSDs, 00:02:57.040 --> 00:03:01.040 and while there's nothing wrong with putting one on your drive for some extra glam, 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 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. 00:03:14.160 --> 00:03:18.560 There are plenty of other components in your rig that could benefit from water cooling instead. 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 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 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, 00:03:39.040 --> 00:03:42.800 and even then, it's cheaper just to get a USB to HDMI dongle. 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 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, 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 00:03:59.040 --> 00:04:02.160 that can actually give you a respectable gameplay experience. 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. 00:04:08.880 --> 00:04:13.600 The GT430 and the GT730 are actually the same chip. 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! 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? 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. 00:04:29.520 --> 00:04:33.440 Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy an overclockable power supply. 00:04:33.440 --> 00:04:39.200 Really just want to crank it out. Yeah, get the vroom vroom's going, you know?