tenthousandyears

I haven't heard either of those but I generally avoid spending hundreds of dollars on unbranded Chinese equipment because of a history of QC issues, lack of good customer service, and bad return policies (IE buyer pays shipping to China for defective parts) that I have encountered in that space.

General troubleshooting applies here. Start replacing things until you isolate the cause. I would try different player applications, a new cable, then try with a different android device. Go from cheapest to more expensive.

You don't mention what headphones you are using. You typically want to upgrade your headphones first. The dragonfly will help good headphones sound better. If you are using sub $100 headphones now, the dragonfly will be a waste of money. Spending money on a good dac first will make your next upgrade less fun. Better to buy good headphones first and let them scale up as you upgrade your source.

If you are hearing noise when amping your PC line out then an external dac will probably help. Honestly there are so many good options in that price range it is hard to go wrong. It's really about features and from factor. You would be hard pressed to hear a big difference in sound quality at this price point. I like the schiit stuff because it's made in the USA with good customer service, warranty, and trial period. It also looks good. I have the dragonfly red as well and it's a good option if you want to use it with your phone. Aside from that the former factor is good for a hidden away PC, but not so much for always connected to a laptop. Their customer service is OK.

SSD block storage is not going to have a noticeable effect on the music. The application is going to read the same bits via the file handle unless there is something seriously wrong with your OS. Instead of hunting for a specific SSD for audio playback, I would focus on a filesystem which has strong checksum features to make sure you don't have silent corruption of your data, and make sure you have a backup copy to restore from.