There was a post a moment ago from SirBlastAlot mentioning that his receiver gets warm. Heat is absolutely, positively the enemy of electronics. I've lost some expensive video production equipment to problems with capacitors that were caused by heat issues.

I use this fan from Brookstone on my external FireWire drives and it's fantastic. A bit pricey, but it has 10-12 variable speeds I believe and it is quiet, quiet, quiet. If you have an AVR that runs hot when your crankin' it, I guarantee you would never hear this fan if you put it on… matter of fact, you won't likely hear it on one of it's middle to low settings from across a quiet room!

I've been wondering about this for when I get things finished in my basement/HT. I thought about hooking up a pair of very low db fans in the rack (that I will build myself) and blow air on the receiver. I just need to figure out,now that I am thinking about it, if I can have it turn on when my receiver turns on. I have a power plug on the receiver, but I think that I have to tell the receiver to turn power on to that plug seperately from telling the receiver to turn itself on.

I DO have a programable touchscreen remote that you can set up various sequences on, so maybe I would set up a sequence that turned on the receiver and then a signal to turn on the power plug then turn on the projector, etc, etc...

Good tip Mark!

I've seen "raw" 110V fans at Radio Shack that a person could put a plug on the end and plug it into the "switched" outlet on a receiver. If your audio rack has a backing, you could even cut a hole and place the fan it there.

I use one of the Radio Shack 110V fans for my Technics SA-GX710 (new Class AA so it runs hot). It is a bit loud when the receiver is on but no music is playing. Otherwise it is not really noticable.

Sean