A little background:
My personal experience was like this. As I have mentioned, I have been physically and mentally active my whole life and began studying up on natural supplements about 20 years ago. I have always incorporated them to a minimal extent, always just relying on proper fitness, diet, and rest. About 2-3 years ago I started noticing that I was having brain fog, forgetting things I shouldn't, not articulating thoughts as well, and starting to feel some general anxiety. There were many factors that could have been in play- 1 and 4 year old kids, new house, crazy stressful career, etc. I decided to ramp up some experimentation with herbals to see if I could get things back on track.
I tried pretty much every herbal test booster under the sun and had minimal results, but not what I was expecting. I did see some positive results from Alpha-GPC and stinging nettle. This carried on until last spring. I decided to see my doc about getting some tests done. We ran full tests and didn't see anything that was out of normal other than my test being at 221. We decided that this was likely due to my life and the stress that is always in it. So we had a plan to make note of particularly stressful areas to define and see what we could do to reduce. I added yoga, meditation, visualization, and additional cardio. We tested again, and all normal except test was at 219. At that point, he sent me to some endos to check out my pituatary and verify my thyroid levels. Everything came back normal, but I was in the low end of my free T3 range. If you know anything about thyroid and the fact that just about anyone can be diagnosed with hypo, it is ridiculous. I don't trust a single doctor when it comes to thyroids to be honest. Anyway, a 3 month endo journey and 2 thought I could be hypo and 2 said I was perfectly fine except for low test.
This went on for 4-5 months and I went back to my doctor to discuss. We ran another set of tests as I was still feeling the same. Again, everything normal except test at 211. At this point we started discussion on test replacement. Stress was not going to leave my life and with everything being normal, we thought if I brought my test levels up, we could evaluate if I saw effects and if it was worth pursuing. So that began the TRT journey. This began a 6 month process of different doses and different intervals with testing being done each time. Exhausting to say the least, but I wanted to get it right. I will say that I noticed immediate effects, but they would fade and it was a process to get dialed in.
Finally, we landed at what I am on today- 125mg every 7 days. I have been on this for about 8 months and life has never been better.
Now to your question (finally)-
I would not be able to accurately say how effective my noot stack was unless I was feeling 100% as a baseline. Now that I have been, I can see the true effects of different stacks. I can say without any hesitation that aniracetam/choline(alpha-gpc), rhodiola, and l-theanine is an amazing mental stack. It takes my 100% operational brain to 150%. Everything became sharper, quicker, more collected, and calm. Recall increased about 25%, anxiety gone completely, and the ability to articulate my thoughts increased about 100%. This all added to increased confidence in my mind, so that made me want to be in mentally strenuous/stressful situations. Way different than I was last year! Now I am looking for stressful, mentally and physically draining situations to be in.
Oh, I should add that I regularly check in with test levels around 700-750 (250-850 scale)now, and it has made all the difference in the world.
Long post, but I hope it gives insight into my own experience.