I seem to recall various companies coming out with alternative amps built on the same guts but with fancy cases.

I had one of those as well but ditched it because it had some ground loop issues with my computer. I purchased a USB sound card with built-in amp from a random Chinese vendor. Seemed like quality stuff but died in a year. Now I've got a pricier USB sound card from Teac, again with class D amps, and it's been doing great. It happily drives my 3-way tower speakers with 12" woofers.