After-market wall warts

Posted by: ChrisSU on 20 November 2015

Not the most exciting topic for discussion, I know, but I wondered if anyone has any experience of these. The traditional approach to the dreaded 'wall wart' is to replace it with a linear power supply - some of which are very expensive, and usually rather bulky - especially if you want one on every router, switch, phone, etc. all over the house. I happened to notice a few days ago the existence if the iFi iPower, which claims to be an 'audiophile standard, Ultra-Low Noise AC/DC adapter.'

OK, now that you've got over the idea of sticking a sock in your mouth while engaging in bisexual activity with some high quality Aussie heavy metal background music, would anyone care to take a guess as to weather these things would inject less filth into your mains than any other wall wart. At £40 each, are they worth a punt?

Posted on: 20 November 2015 by Mike-B

As an avid noise reduction geek, I'm already fully shielded with mains & ethernet & the ethernet is 100% correctly grounded & its all overdosed on ferrite .......... so I could not help but notice these .......... interesting, very, wall-warts.

Although they don't give much away other than hint at the design, the ideas mentioned do have some credibility & I would guess they are significantly quieter than the general marketplace items whatever.

However I would be more interested in changing the power adaptor for my Synology NAS, but that is an in-line item & is rated at 5 amps, the iFi wall wart is 1.1 amp with 12v.

Yes it will fit my Netgear switch, but I have troubles with a £40 PSU on an £18 switch. I have checked the latest Netgear wall-wart spec & found the OEM produces the same item under another brand as medical grade, so its not yer average item.

Would be nice to get a chunky iFi PSU with this circuit design that has the ability to supply power to more than one item, in my case NAS & Switch.

Posted on: 20 November 2015 by Naimiac

Originally Posted by Mike-B:

Yes it will fit my Netgear switch, but I have troubles with a £40 PSU on an £18 switch.

Just see it as a £58 well powered system. In a Naim box the transformer/psu part is probably costlier than the circuit board..

Posted on: 20 November 2015 by Fueller

Thanks for flagging these, If they do what they say then exactly what I'm looking for. I've got modem / router / phone and switch all with wall warts on 1 extension and have only succumbed to fork out for 1 linear psu on the switch (£120). The NAS is always an issue due to much higher amp rating (my vortexbox is 4-5Amps I think), I was quoted £600 for a custom psu for this.

Posted on: 22 November 2015 by bunter

I've put an order in for an ifi ipower supply to replace the unit that came with my Arcam irDac. Will be interesting to see what (if any) difference it makes...

Posted on: 22 November 2015 by ChrisSU

Originally Posted by bunter:

I've put an order in for an ifi ipower supply to replace the unit that came with my Arcam irDac. Will be interesting to see what (if any) difference it makes...

It'll be interesting to see if you can hear any improvement - let us know. I might get one for the switch that lives under my rack out of curiosity. as Naim provide a SMPS with the Unitiserve, I guess they can't all be bad?