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Proper ventilation is critical to the longevity and performance of your electronics Is Your Home Theater Full of Hot Air?
It has been shown that excessive heat build up around electronic equipment will both degrade its performance and reduce its lifespan. It is the number one reason for hard drive failures. With today’s high-powered receivers, amplifiers and DVRs it is becoming increasingly important to keep your equipment well ventilated. Some Like It Not So Hot
Simmer Down
Proper equipment positioning is also critical for this natural flow. Your hottest components (Receivers, Amplifiers, DVRs, and Media Center PCs) should be placed at the top of the cabinet and should not be stacked upon. This way the hottest air will not rise up through your other components. Leave as much excess space above each unit as possible. As you work your way down the equipment cabinet, position progressively cooler components. Components at the bottom of the cabinet should be devices like CD players, DVD players, or VCRs as they tend to run pretty cool. The hotter, upper components should each have their own shelf. The lower, cooler components can be safely stacked on each other, a couple per shelf. A good rule of thumb is, if it has vent slots on the top, it’s a “hot” component. Do NOT stack these components and place them higher in the cabinet. If it has a solid top surface, it likely runs cooler and can be placed lower in the cabinet. See the diagram depicting an example of good equipment positioning. A Little Help Please!
Very often no matter how intelligently you lay out the equipment rack, your gear is going to get too hot and natural airflow will not be enough. This is when you need help with assisted or forced air ventilation. We offer two types of forced air ventilation, spot coolers and cabinet coolers.
While a spot cooler effectively circulates air around one component, it does not cool the entire equipment enclosure. Our cabinet cooling system is designed to do just that. The system features two large 4 1/2” diameter whisper fans mounted directly into the back panel. A lower fan blows fresh air into the cabinet, and an upper fan draws warm air out. This “push-pull” configuration is able to cycle up to 45 cubic feet of air per minute. Efficiency is increased further by replacing the standard wood component shelves with perforated steel shelves. The steel shelves have over 280 holes in them, allowing the air travel up through one component layer to the next. This is the best way to keep your equipment at approximate room temperature. The fans are controlled by an adjustable speed control, or rheostat. While the fans can be plugged in to run continuously, on many installations, we plug them into the switched outlet on the back of the receiver so that they automatically come on when the receiver is powered up.
Our cabinet cooling forced air ventilation system including two fans, three steel shelves, and the adjustable rheostat is an optional feature that can be added to our Theater-Tech™, Evolution™, and Castleton™ Home Theater Furniture Systems for just $399. It can also be retrofitted into many other enclosures, depending on their dimensions. You spend hard earned dollars on your home theater equipment, why not maximize it’s lifespan and performance with an appropriate operating environment. Proper equipment cooling/ventilation is just one more reason why Diamond Case Home Theater Furniture is the best choice for your system. Please call myself or by brother Steve at 800-616-5354 with any questions or to place an order. Cabinet fan solutions: Spot coolers and cabinet coolers
The following solutions can be purchased through our on-line store or by calling us directly at 800-616-5354.
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