The furniture I'm going to put my receiver in (when I get one) doesn't allow alot of air movement. How bad an idea would it be to put a small fan in the back to keep things circulating?
TPL: that would actually be a great idea! Many of these receivers need adequate airflow. I personally no longer place my equipment inside enclosed shelving. Having said that, if you must do it, make sure you have adequate clearance above the receiver and provide a fan if necessary to either circulate in cooler air, or push out warmer air.
For the top of the receiver, allow at least 6" if it's one of the higher rated receivers (NAD, H/K, Elite, etc). They need breathing room!
The first thing to do if you are buying a cabinet to house your receiver is to work out where you receiver will sit and then completely cut out the back covering from this section - don't make a hole - remove that bit completely. I agree with geekboy regarding top clearance but I might be a little more conservative.
If you go taking out bits of the backing of the cabinet then make sure that you aren't structurally weakening it too much. Good idea is to use screws on the remaining section at close intervals.
Another thing that is important is that some receivers have vents on the side, ie H/K, whereas other like NAD don't. If you have vents on the side of the receiver then chances are that that manufacturer designed their cooling system to take that into account - so don't go covering it up too much.
Thanks a lot. I actually was planning on finding a couple of small fans I could mount in the large cut out in the back of the cabinet. Anyone have good ideas on where to get a little fan? Don't Radio Shack type places sell things like that?
A back of the cabinet fan works just fine. I didn't want to ruin my nice cabinet so I cut a round hole exaclty the size of the fan, mounted it with 4 screws and the cabinet stays cool, even when the door is closed.
I used a standard sized 12 volt blue led lighted computer fan that you can get anywhere. Just cut the fans plug off, ignore the yellow wire, use the black and red wire, not sure which is + or - but try both ways and when the fan blows the correct direction you'll know which is which. I power it with an AC/DC transformer that is running off the power from the the receivers swithched outlet, it's only on when the receivers on. The tranformer is one of those variable 1.5-12 volt radio shack type. I can run it slower and quieter by using a lower voltage and it is still very effective.
This is exactly the sort of info I was looking for. Thanks alot.
I had even thought of running it off a thermostat but I suspect that would needlessly complicate things.
TL
Darren061
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I have a H/K AVR 5550 (7.1) and that runs very hot. Would not even think of putting that in a confined space. Alot of these top end avr's actually have built in fans now so make sure that if you do put it in an enclosed space theres no back and plenty of room for the fan to blow the hot air out and plenty of space above and to the side of the amp.