Whether you have a TV stand like this, where everything stacks up ontop of itself,

or one that has shelves for your gear,

the thing is, it's all enclosed and filling with heat. Heat plus electronics means shorter life, and even some random thermal shut downs. The biggest sources of heat are AV Recievers and DVR.

Some may also have power amps, PS3's, and Xbox's that also produce substantial amounts of heat and normally aren't INside entertainment centers. If you do have those inside, you really need to take them out or do this active cooling idea below. Otherwise, with all that gear inside there, they're basically acting like a space heater in a closet.

Some things I've seen people do are drill out holes in the top rear of their cabinets to let heat out and cut holes in the base to help let cool air in from the bottom.

This can work, but what would work even better is some kind of active cooling system by means of fans. The downside to fans are the noise, but luckily there's a whole industry dedicated to making quiet fans; The PC industry. And some companies are cashing in.

Stand Out Designs makes nice TV stands and has this as an upgrade for 300.00For 300 bucks you get 4 fans, 2, 12v power transformers, 4 shelves (albiet glass shelves) with holes in them, and a couple screws.

If you shop cheap, you could retrofit your own stand for a lot less. Newegg has deals on fans everyonce in a while and Schythe makes nice quiet fans they they'll put volume deals on.http://www.newegg.com/Product/...120mm

But, you'll need some way of powering the fans, and I came across this gem, 12v, 1.8A transformer for $3.00! It'll easily power 6 low speed 120mm fans, which should be plenty.http://www.parts-express.com/p...er_9EYou'll need a power cord for it, but they can be attained pretty cheap. Hell I have 1 or 2 sitting around here that I never knew what to do with until now.

The end, you'd have to cut off and strip to bare wire, solder on more wires to run to your fans (wire in parallel to keep them all operating at 12v), cut holes in the top rear of your entertainment center where you want to exhaust out the hot air, and cut holes in the bottom front where you want cool air to come in.

Here's the coolest part, because that transformer doesn't have the big transformer part right where it plugs into the wall, you know those kinds that take up two outlets and they suck, you can plug this into the back of your AVReceiver. When you turn on the receiver (which creates a lot of heat) it turns on the fans. When you turn it off, the fans turn off.

So for 30-40bucks, you can have a switchable active cooling system for your entertainment center/TV stand.

If you don't have an AVR to switch your power supply on/off, there's also a commercial option that is temerature controlled.http://www.coolerguys.com/840556082231.html

You really are bored today. LOL

All my setups use open air, open back design, like this:



Plenty of room to air out and breathe properly.

But I agree - ventilation is crucial for keeping things in working order. I had a receiver die on me once before because of being a constricted area too long.

And making setups yourself is pretty darn easy - all the components can be had for real cheap as you pointed out!

Open air designs are best and can, 99.9% of the time, get by without the need of fans. It's only in those rare occasions where a person is using a large multi-channel amp and a few monoblocks that they'll want to get a small amount of air moving away from them.

marlin29311 wrote:You really are bored today. LOL!

Yeah. I'm actually avoiding calc homework. Ahh well, I had my fun. Time to buckle down and do it.
Modified by Looneybomber at 12:05 PM 10/8/2009

Looks good looney.

The best feature of that setup is plugging in to the switched outlet on a receiver. Every properly setup entertainment system should use the AVR as the source of sound. So it will always be on.

I was trying to figure out a good flow dynamics configuration.

I was thinking four intake 120mm fans on the bottom left and right sides. So two per side.

Then 2 or 4 outlet fans on the top back of the cabinet. This would prevent alot of exhaust to intake recirculation