The current Rotel thread has touched on heat issues and rather than hijack, I'm moving my side question here.

I'm considering building some custom cabinets for my rec room to house all the bits and pieces. My Yamaha Rx owner's manual (i know, i actually used it ) recommends clearance of 30cm above and 20cm left/right/rear. Flipping through the owner's gallery pictures, most Rxers don't seem to have anywhere near this clearance.

I wouldn't think my 5860 runs hotter than anybody else. Is the 30-20 overkill? Has anybody installed a small fan to promote circulation?

Obviously I don't want to blow anything up but this is valuable real estate.

Endish, looking through various homeowners A/V gear on the internet it astonishes me just how often I see receivers and amps with equipment stacked right on top of them enclosed in very tight quarters. I try to keep as much distance between my equipment as feasibly possible because, while far from being an electronics expert, I have always heard and read that heat kills electronics.

I believe a couple or so folks here on the board do run cooling fans (Shag?) and I am planning to install at least one in my equipment rack/cabinet whenever we install the system in our new room in a few days. Better safe than sorry...I believe.

My Denon 2805 manual states to keep 4" around the unit, dang that would require myAV rack to be pretty darn wide. I do keep 4-5" on the top for the vents, and have about 2" on the sides. I don't have any issues. My HT is in the basement, which is pretty cool year around anyway, so I've never had any issues with the Denon..

The biggest thing seems to be having enough space above the unit for some horizontal airflow, and having a flat surface (ie not shelf lips hanging down at front and back) so the warm air can flow smoothly out the front and back.

Seems to me that an enterprising rack designer could build some "chimney effect" into the side panels and make for VERY effective cooling...

>>> Seems to me that an enterprising rack designer could build some "chimney effect" into the side panels and make for VERY effective cooling... <<<

John, actually some of the Middle Atlantic racks use this theory for cooling. We're getting the double cooling fan for the top of our MA rack...just for good measure.

I just went with one MA fan in each rack, added the Thermostatic Fan Control Module to control both fans. I don't expect a heat issue, but considering the amount invested in the components, I felt that the cooling system cost was a no brainier. I'll post the results in a few weeks once I have the racks and everything in place.

Even 4" seems reasonable, but at the 8" recommended by Yam, my rack would be almost 3' wide!

I definitely agree that most setups don't have nearly enough circulation room. Is there a rule of thumb for volume of airflow required for sufficient cooling you've come across?

I would think even 1 small well placed fan could make up for close quarters.

I followed your link to your setup. The custom cabinet work you are replacing looks great. It certainly seems as though you have some fairly significant heat generators tucked in there. Did you have any problems dissipating the heat? Is there a fan tucked in at the back to help?

In reply to:

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I would think even 1 small well placed fan could make up for close quarters

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Endish:
I use this Brookstone fan on my external hard drives. After being used for 8-10 hours a day for a couple of years, it's gotten a little noiser. But when I first bought it (and likely under normal conditions) it was absolutely quiet at it's lower speeds.

It's a bit pricey, but I liked it enough to replace my current one next time I'm in a mall with a Brookstone!

The four Halo amps have never casued a heat issue at all, the amp driving the front mains runs the warmest. But you can place your hand on any of the amps even when the system is pushing high volumes, and they are just warm, and never near hot.
The two new MA rack systems will each have a fan, these will be connected to a temperature controller, which will vary the speed of the fans depending on the need for cooling. Each MA rack will be housed in a wood cabinet with three of the sides solid. Logic being since the fan will be top mounted and will be capable of changing out the air in each cabinet 3 to 4 times each minute, I should not have any heat issues.

A small cooling fan or two can do wonders.

A small cooling fan or two can do wonders.

Having active rather than passive cooling will greatly improve the temperature of the amp inside.

you don't say

Oops...kinda goofed up there

I just edited one and submitted two somehow.

Its not nessiarly the heat that kills eletronics but thermal stresses… if you keep your components at the same tempature all the time, i.e turned on all the time so long as they are below their thermal overlaod setpoint you will be ok.. it’s the heating up and cooling down of eletronics that kills them, the thermal stresses palced on the solderjoints will cause them to break over a period of time. The trick is to minimize the amount of thermal stress, and by adding a fan it will do wonders to keep your components as close to room tempature as possible. In my last job, we would have servers up for years, and they ran at about 90 degrees or so… but this was never an issue sense the computers were never turned off. And with my current job we have eletronics that never get turned off and they have been running for 10+ years now.and operate ad 90-100 degrees or so, and no problems with any of them.


What I would recommend doing is build your av rack, and built it with a 4 inch clearance and get 2 fans one for intake and one for exhaust. This should keep your reciever very cool and you should have no problem at all, if you add a fan you can almost negate the clearance that the manufacture reccomends, sense the manufactures are not planning on you adding fans, they are just planning on convection to cool the fan..


Hope this helps.