Unitiserve adapters

As today while helping my friends to update firmware 1.7c to their USs, we found 3 adapters for US are TOTALLY DIFFERENT, all outputs are 12V but 2 is 3A and 1 is 4.16A
Frankly speaking, the China-made laptop-look adapters are never fitted with thousand $ US.
I don’t why Naim doesn’t provide linear PSU for US

You could use your own 12v linear PSU if preferred as it’s just a standard barrel plug input.
I’ve never owned a Unitiserve or tried different power supply types personally so others may have more specific hands on experience to share.
Internally it’s not far off a raspberry pi with an optical drive for ripping and a hard disk for storage!
Changing the power source to a high quality linear power supply from a stock switched mode power supply may reduce system noise, I’d expect the main concern would be handling of noise on the Ethernet network interface but that is likely mitigated by other means sufficiently already so spending the time and effort to add a more costly Linear power supply may not translate to any real improvements to the performance and ability of the Unitiserve to stream audio over Ethernet.
I expect at the time the product was designed it came down partly to cost and ability to fit a suitable power supply internally to the product.

Unitiserve on left, Unitiqute to the right

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Only the middle PSU in your pictures was supplied by Naim.
It is an early example & was superseded by a different brand, as the MTBF was found to be poor.

Regards
Neil.

Have to agree the cheap power adapters supplied the Unitiserve are completely unsatisfactory, I’ve mentioned this on this forum many times. I got a better one with a $200 shaver. Mine has had a lose connection since the day I bought it, if you happen to brush past it, it disconnects the player. Also technically we’re not allowed an proper discussion re options without breaking forum rules re after market PS and Naim will (apparently) not recommend a better alternative.

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When I got my (newly manufactured) Unitiserve several years ago, the power plug was loose like that and I took it back to the dealer. Naim mailed them a new socket (ie the bit in the Unitiserve) and the dealer changed it over. The new socket wasn’t loose and comparing the one fitted initially by Naim to the one they had now supplied only a couple of weeks or so after manufacturing my US, the first part was obviously incorrect with a much larger central socket, so the thin central pin on the power lead was a very loose fit. Poor quality control of sockets or power supply leads basically.

Best

David

Cheap adapters with your expensive server. It’s been my only real grip with Naim.

Yet despite these obvious shortcomings many people bought one, used it daily and continue to do so today.
I’m also not sure if Naim had decided to go the route of adding a costly external PSU, a HiCap sized product being an obvious candidate given the relative form factor, if that would have made the functionality of the product significantly better.
Short of adding at least a few 100 to the total cost and perhaps providing a more robust connector it’s questionable if they’d have got a better product that gave better value to cost.
If you dissect the internals, in terms of hardware at least, it’s mostly standard off the shelf parts anyway and looking at the rear I/O looks much like a regular PC of that period would have done with its VGA, serial port and PS/2 interfaces.
The positive at least is the DC power input is a standard barrel connector meaning you have options what you connect to it as an owner.

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I had the Unitserve on its own SMPS, then with 12 v Israeli linear ps, then Uptone Js2. The last gave the most noticeable uplift.
The Hdplex 400 would be very good too and cheaper vs the Uptone.

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