- It's a classic gamer blunder.
You spent all your cash on silly things like performance,
and now you're stuck with on-board audio.
But fear not gamers,
for these cheap and easy to install power filters
will isolate your harmonic interference,
filter your high frequency ripple,
and enhance your overall stability.
Sounds great! Too great.
How could...
(Linus growls)
How could a fake-o memory stick improve all of that?
Kind of makes me wonder,
is this yet another audio product
with marketing so deceptive it ought to be illegal?
Fortunately, we don't have to wonder anymore.
We have a lab,
so we're gonna be finding out once and for all,
does Elfidelity know something I don't?
Are there power noise filters for PC Hi-Fi,
the cheapest shortcut to great audio?
Or are they yet another log-shaped fish
in the cess pool of audiophile marketing?
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- In general, the goal when designing an audio device
is to have the output be as close
to the original recording as possible.
One user might prefer more bass,
while another might like to enhance vocals
through software equalization,
but the hardware should aim to avoid altering the character
of the sound or adding any unnecessary noise.
Of course, if you've ever used an onboard sound card,
you probably know that these basic solutions
sometimes fall well short of that mark.
Most onboard audio is decent these days,
but I've personally encountered everything
from slight
background hissing, (static hissing)
to loud ticking noises (electronic ticking)
every time I move the mouse.
That is where these come in.
These have all been opened for testing already,
but this is my first close look at them.
We've got a variety of different power supply power filters.
This one right here is for SATA devices.
It goes on the back of the drive like this.
Okay, and then you've just got your same SATA interface.
You plug your power cable and your data cable,
but now filtered.
- [David] Does the power even go-
- Oh my god, David,
I'm so glad you asked.
It doesn't appear so.
I can't find any traces that are actually routed
from here over here. (David chuckles)
Like, look at this.
These all just go straight up.
Oh, you know what? No, these two go over here.
The vast majority of them just go straight up
to that pass through though.
That is hilarious.
I actually am getting a headache just looking at this.
- [David] You just need better audio Linus.
- This is really painful.
Yeah, yeah, maybe I should be listening through Elfidelity.
This one here is for 3-pin or 4-pin fans
and promises to improve clarity and reduce noise,
or is it to improve clarity by reducing noise?
We're not sure and neither it seems are Elfidelity.
Their marketing is kind of all over the place.
Most of the hardware we bought
follows a pretty similar pattern though.
You install it between some power source
and some power using thing, and then it "cleans" it.
The reviews are pretty positive though.
I don't know whether the 10 orders is depressing
or gives me hope.
These are just obviously fake.
"Good filter! Works fine"
"Very good, improves noise and speed.
I believe it will prolong the life of hard drive."
I promise you,
it doesn't make your hard drive faster,
and if it did, that would be a huge problem.
These are precision manufactured devices.
You don't want them to go faster or slower.
"I'm a fan of this brand.
I use the filters for DDR4, PCI, SATA and cooler,
and the system is more stable.
I do not lose data if the power drops or oscillates."
I hate it when my power oscillates.
"Finally, it is a mandatory item
if you want to have a PC that lasts much longer."
Wow. Yeah.
I always like more points of failure
when I want my PC to last much longer.
"The price-to-cost ratio is so good."
The price might be bad.
The cost might be bad.
But that ratio of price to cost, it's good.
I was giving you guys a second for that to click in.
Price-to-cost ratio.
Anyway, the sketchiest one of all
has got to be the DDR4 module.
So it's a power filter that fits in a memory slot,
and while I can kind of see
how you could market power filtering
on high draw devices as a benefit, maybe GPUs or something,
I mean using capacitors and inductors
like the ones that are plastered all over these PCBs,
is a proven strategy for reducing signal noise
by conditioning the power.
It's just that how could adding a completely,
completely unnecessary piece of hardware
contribute to cleaning up power?
If we were never drawing the power in the first place,
we don't need to clean it up.
We're gonna get to this in more detail later,
but for now, if you were looking at the rest of this stuff
and thought those shiny and colorful doodads all over them,
sure look familiar.
Pat yourself on the back,
because they actually come from the same company
what brung us this weird PCIe card two years ago.
Which raises the question,
if we've already debunked these guys
why are we looking at them again?
Well, one,
because we evidently haven't fully buried them yet.
Not only are these products listed
but they're apparently selling well enough
that they're in stock and shipped immediately.
And two, because we are finally armed
with the equipment to show that they don't help.
'Cause I mean, maybe last time I just had a tin ear
and I couldn't tell the difference.
This time, we've got the tools.
Let's get them installed.
For those wondering, yes, this is our Star Forge PC.
I guess I'll start with the DDR4 memory modules.
I can't believe how much stuff we bought from these guys.
How much total did we spend?
Wait, we haven't even talked about pricing yet.
These modules are 40 US dollars each.
David, I have an actual headache.
(David chuckles)
This is painful for me.
- [David] Would it make more sense
like split the RAM up,
and then have each RAM stick be filtered by one module?
Am I thinking too hard?
- Let me show you. - Yeah.
- [Employee] No, you're not.
Option one, memory speed priority.
Option two, priority filtering effect.
(Linus groans)
- Let's just install the hard drive filters.
(David laughs)
I hate that people are buying this.
I hope that people aren't buying this,
but the fact that these guys are still around
all these years later
still selling this stuff would indicate to me
that someone is buying it.
I don't want this video to be about mocking people
for buying this stuff,
I want it to be about educating them.
Okay, my hard drives are filtered.
Okay, fan filtering.
This is actually one where I could almost see
how maybe possibly it could do something.
PWM controlled electronics, like fans,
have been known to cause undesirable behavior.
For example, in monitors, DC backlighting is more desirable
than PWM backlighting,
because PWM can cause a flickering effect
that can be more fatiguing.
However, for a system fan, I have a very hard time believing
that it would affect your onboard audio.
Okay.
Neat.
Actually, before we fire the system up,
I think it's worth taking a closer look
at these RAM filters.
They're a bit different from the other Elfidelity products.
Instead of being covered in colorful candy capacitors,
we get a pair of these NEC/TOKIN proadlizers,
which are basically high performance capacitors.
The reason these particular chips surprised me so much
is that I've seen them before on GPUs, motherboards,
and perhaps most notoriously, on the PlayStation 3,
where they are known point of failure
as documented in this 259 page form discussion
that is actually still getting updates and replies.
Now, assuming that these are genuine,
it makes me kind of question my assumptions here.
If these were really just snake oil,
why would they spend the money
on premium components when they could just put little gems
on top of generic ones?
They aren't even doing that typical audiophile thing
where they charge an arm and a leg for this stuff,
knowing that almost no one will buy it.
It's pretty reasonably priced,
ranging from 10 to about 40 US dollars.
Unfortunately, they also aren't doing
a useful audiophile thing.
I mean, I get it.
How could anything be so brazenly an utter lie, right?
You'd think that with 11 different kinds of capacitors
on eight different devices in the system,
plus some inductors and rectifiers,
it should all add up to some pretty good filtering, right?
Look, they've even got little indicator lights
to show they're working.
But no, not even close.
We ran our tests by recording an empty line in,
with and without the filters.
First at idle, then while stress testing the system.
There's another type of test known as a null test,
but we had some trouble getting that set up
in time for this video and besides,
it doesn't really matter,
because the evidence we have is damning enough already.
Let's have a listen together,
because I actually haven't gotten to listen to it just yet.
Let's start with our control.
These wave files are boosted by about 45 decibels
so my listening volume will be quite low,
but I should still be able to hear it.
(static buzzing)
Okay. (static buzzing)
Now I wanna see no filter with stress test now.
(static buzzing)
To Elfidelity's credit, there is something here
for them to try and get rid of.
It should be noted though,
that these files are boosted by about 45 decibels,
so even if these sounds do exist
in your onboard audio output,
it's likely that you wouldn't notice them day-to-day.
I'm gonna go with the memory filter first.
Oh my god, I can tell just looking at the waveform
that this is not better. (static buzzing)
Must need more filtering.
Let's try all the filters with stress.
(static buzzing)
(Linus laughs)
What? (static buzzing)
I mean, I thought at best these wouldn't do anything,
but I also thought that at worst, they wouldn't do anything.
How did they manage to make the performance worse?
(static buzzing)
That is undeniably a more noticeable noise floor
and worse filtering performance.
And that's not even all.
Remember all those pretty capacitors?
We're pretty sure that at least some of them are fake.
These Rubycon caps on the SATA filter?
Take a look at the printing quality on the label.
Genuine Rubycon caps are much sharper,
especially on the logo,
and we can't find a product sheet for any cap they make
of this spec that looks like this.
And the bad news keeps on coming.
On the listing for these filters on Taobao,
there are references to a Korean company called SOtM.
And if we pay them a quick visit,
we find that what Elfidelity has done here
is make a a replica
of their presumably equally pointless filters.
Maybe we'll do a follow up looking at those guys
at some...
Are you kidding me?
They make a motherboard designed for audio.
You know what? Maybe we're not gonna do a follow up.
Maybe we're just not gonna go there.
I think I've had enough snake oil for one day.
The most complimentary thing that I can possibly say
about these then,
is that they mostly don't cost you any performance.
With the filters installed,
your RAM and your hard drive speeds should be the same.
Though it should be noted that the fan filters
did appear to lower our fan speeds by a small amount.
If these are junk then,
where does that leave gamers who want an easy way
to increase their sound quality?
Well, it leaves them saving their cash
for a little bit longer,
for something like a new pair of headphones,
a desktop USB DAC and amp, a higher quality power supply,
a power conditioner,
maybe a quality screwdriver from lttstore.com
that they can use to install all of those things,
except maybe the headphones.
Anyway, we're gonna have all of that linked down below.
Now, admittedly, there's a chance
that the 850 watt EVGA G6 that we installed
on this system is simply too good
to notice any additional filtering,
but there are also only so many bones that we can throw
to Elfidelity before they've got a full skeleton of excuses.
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- If you guys enjoyed this beat down,
you'll probably also like the time we took a look
at an audiophile network switch.
Equally ineffective at improving audio quality,
but four times the cost.
Actually, the network switch at least
didn't make audio quality worse.