First, based on reports from a friend of mine with decades of high end experience at the reference level, the sotm sata filters do provide a nice improvement for the money.
Based on personal experience, a SSD for the operating system is preferable and provides a marginal improvement. Why I cannot say.
I use a bank of power conditioning devices called PS Audio Noise Harvesters. These gadgets have lights on them that blink when noise from the AC is being conerted into light. There are only two things I know that consistently trigger them. The first is dimmer switches. The second is any computer, laptop or otherwise, even when connected to room on a different circuit. The noise from the PC apparently gets back into the system at the circuit breaker. My point is, even if you isolate components in the computer, it isn't just noise riding on your connection from PC to stereo that is an issue. Computers pollute all your AC power. Power conditioning seems to mitigate it. Laptop, desktop, it doesn't matter. It could be the PSU, fans or video card. I got really good audible results with the Harvesters.
Based on personal experience, a SSD for the operating system is preferable and provides a marginal improvement. Why I cannot say.
I use a bank of power conditioning devices called PS Audio Noise Harvesters. These gadgets have lights on them that blink when noise from the AC is being conerted into light. There are only two things I know that consistently trigger them. The first is dimmer switches. The second is any computer, laptop or otherwise, even when connected to room on a different circuit. The noise from the PC apparently gets back into the system at the circuit breaker. My point is, even if you isolate components in the computer, it isn't just noise riding on your connection from PC to stereo that is an issue. Computers pollute all your AC power. Power conditioning seems to mitigate it. Laptop, desktop, it doesn't matter. It could be the PSU, fans or video card. I got really good audible results with the Harvesters.