Cooling an AV cabinet - anyone built their own stetup or can point me at a decent local solution.

Forums › Home Workshop DIY › Cooling an AV cabinet - anyone built their own stetup or can point me at a decent local solution.

gedc

355 posts

Ultimate Geek

#189560 4-Jan-2016 17:19

So been moving lots of av kit around to new locations in the home and my Yamaha receiver slots into the top shelf in a wooden av cabinet - open fronted. It's fairly well boxed in so I'm thinking either drill a grid of holes through the top to allow for hot air venting or install a thermostatically controlled cooling kit in the back and suck air through the cabinet. Found what I thought was the perfect all in one solution from a company called jamware in christchurch nz who do the fans, power pack, controller in a kit but then realised they only sell to business's. I can't find any nz stockists so emailed them. On the other hand, has anyone made their own from components that are no doubt available to be bought individually ? Keen to run it from the mains and keen for it to have a sensor so that it turns on and off automatically when the receiver start to heat up the cabinet.

Was thinking of a bog standard PC fan or indeed two linked up but not sure how to control the speed so it doesn't sound like a chopper is trying to take off behind the cabinet.

Cheers

Ged

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#1461094 4-Jan-2016 17:23

Drill a grid of holes. Lots of them. Did the same. Worked for my cooling solution and the design looked good.

Do whatever you want to do man.

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gedc

355 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1461100 4-Jan-2016 17:39

That's my fallback position having previously assessed it with the mrs. Suffice to say it's a long fallback position if her views be considered :)

I was about to print the grid and drill the holes when she decided to involve herself.

Thanks for the support

mailmarshall

347 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1461108 4-Jan-2016 17:55

I installed one of these and along with with lots of holes does the job well. My AV / SKY equipment cabinet hovers around 30 degrees.

Added bonus of automatically coming on when temp goes above 30. I have a Yamaha amp which is like having a mini heater!!

http://www.amazon.com/Coolerguys-PRO-Metal-Cabinet-Cooling-Controller/dp/B005ZIR13Q

Recomended.

gedc

355 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1461110 4-Jan-2016 18:00

Perfect. Just found cooler guys website as i was reading this. Looks pretty damn good. Godawful shame the christchurch based business which appears to make similar products doesnt sell to joe public. Thanks again.

davidcole

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#1461113 4-Jan-2016 18:21

You could go a piece of acrylic off trade me cut to size with 2 120mm holes cut in for fans.

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timmmay

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#1461119 4-Jan-2016 18:39

Cut holes and put computer fans to draw air through. If you search geekzone you may find more details.

mailmarshall

347 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1461175 4-Jan-2016 20:55

My overall advice having been through this is to understand how hot all your gadgets get when running all together.

I have a Yamaha Amp, MySky HD, Xbox 1, Amazon TV, Bluray player and a switch in the cabinetry. Amp and mysky are the 2 things that create the most heat with MySky being the noisiest.

The Coolerguys fans are pretty quiet - I don't hear anything when it's running.

Additionally I have put a 1U grill (painted to match) at the toekick of the cabinetry for added circulation.

Dunnersfella

4086 posts

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#1461194 4-Jan-2016 21:26

Talking to the most switched on AV installers I've come across... and most have given up on temperature controlled fans, as they find them to be inaccurate.
Instead they're triggering it with the 12 volt trigger on the AV receiver, so as soon as the AVR is turned on, the 12 volt trigger starts up the fan.

Of course, if you have an entry level receiver, you'll need a slightly different approach.

gedc

355 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1461259 5-Jan-2016 00:19

Thanks for that. I hava a Yamaha RX-V765 and just had a look on the back and it has a 12v output so I presume that's what you mean. How would this connect upto the fan system. Would it simply bypass the thermo controller ?

eddyg

56 posts

Master Geek

#1461305 5-Jan-2016 09:19

I have a HTPC in the same cabinet, I installed a 6 fan temperature controlled fan unit in that, and then I drilled two holes at the top of the cabinet for two variable speed fans, routed a rectangle over the top for an aluminium grill, pulled two of the temp sensors out of the HTPC and stuck them around the cabinet, and connected the fans.

Since the HTPC is on all of the time (it doubles as the home server for mail, etc) the fans are always running but do throttle back.

I'm happy with this solution. Usually runs at around 30 degrees in the cabinet, with two NAS and the HTPC on all of the time.

If you don't have anything that is running all of the time then the 12v trigger will work well, note that it is a trigger, it can't provide enough power to actually run the fan.

You can knock up a circuit using just a transistor and a resister, see https://teachmetomake.wordpress.com/how-to-use-a-transistor-as-a-switch/ for a good description of how to do this.

I will be doing this soonish since my amps are in an adjoining cabinet and was also thinking of using the trigger (I'm already using it for triggering the power on the power amp, but it can be daisy chained, there is usually a trigger in and out).

Cheers Ed.

eddyg

56 posts

Master Geek

#1461359 5-Jan-2016 10:36

You can get all of the parts from aliexpress pretty cheaply.

Dynamic

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#1461598 5-Jan-2016 12:51

If anything in the cabinet has USB you could pull the fans from a cheap USB cooling pad or mount any USB powered fan in front of a rear-facing hole. Have done this for a personal project more than once very successfully.

As there was not much room for fresh air to come in, and the doors covered the face of the unit, I routed a section of the front of the bottom shelf so there was a gap between it and the door when the door was closed.

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afe66

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#1461599 5-Jan-2016 12:52

I have a demon x3000 and used the ?12 volt screen driver connection to drive a silient case fan.
So when I turn on the amp the fan turns on and blows air across the amp.

Bought a plastic box from jaycar, a 3.5mm mono plug and a 120mm case fan.

There are photos somewhere of it in an earlier post.

A.

timmmay

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#1461654 5-Jan-2016 13:40

I originally used a solid state relay with the 5V output from the TV USB port to start some 12V computer fans. Now I just plug them directly into a 12V power supply from DSE, the power is only applied when my system power is switched on using this power saving device (which used to cost a lot more).

zyo

513 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1465249 7-Jan-2016 16:11

I installed two of these units on the cabinet.

http://www.amazon.com/AC-Infinity-MULTIFAN-Receiver-Playstation/dp/B00G05A2MU/ref=sr_1_16?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1452136277&sr=1-16&keywords=cabinet+cool

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