I was thinking about this setup for cooling my rack. It will be recessed in a closet at the back of the room. The ceiling of the room is vaulted with the 45 degree portion of the vault starting at 8 ft from the floor. The ceiling of the closet will stop at 8 ft so there will be a roof on the top of the closet where I am going to be placing my rear surrounds. (There will be another closet tucked into the other rear corner of the room to mirror this one. My idea was to use the SilverStone automatic fan controller, two 80mm fans behind a 2U perf panel at the bottom of the rack to draw cool air in and a 120mm to exhaust the air out the top. I would cut a round hole in the top of my enclosed rack, place the 120mm fan on the inner ceiling of the rack and run dryer flex duct to the ceiling of the closet, and vent it to the room. I don't want to run it into the closet because I don't think there is enough room in the closet to exhaust all of that hot air for extended periods.

Does this seem like a good setup? Is the fan controller overkill? Do I even need the intake fans? I will have faceplates on all of my gear and a door on the back of the rack so I can control the airflow better.

Comments? Critiques? Hey BigMouth! Where are you when I need you?!!!!

Hellooo! Anyone? Bueller?

:confused:There's some really helpful people here, but 3 hours on a holiday and you're impatient?:confused:

I think that in most cases fans are overkill. But I'm going to do it! :)

:confused:There's some really helpful people here, but 3 hours on a holiday and you're impatient?:confused:

I think that in most cases fans are overkill. But I'm going to do it! :)Are you kidding? You can't tell me that everyone isn't wasting their time on here too! :p

Seriously though, my AVR seems to put out some serious heat so I think I need some actual forced airflow. I don't think simple convection is going to be enough.

Someone's going to give more practical advice than me, but I'm thinking of using a flexduct from the rack closet out to an adjacent room. One tip I found that I hope to use is to put the fan on the far end of the duct (i.e. in the other room) and let it suck. I think the fans work better sucking as opposed to pushing, and it gets any noise from the fans out of the room. Of course, your adjacent rooms would have to allow for this.

My rack is set up with a 2U perforated plate at the bottom and a middle atlantic 2U exhaust fan at the top. It monitors the temp and controls fan speed as necessary. I would be surprised if you needed fans on both the intake and the exhaust. If you can swing it budget wise, I would think a fan controller would be useful, especially if the rack is in your theater room. This should help reduce fan noise. If you can vent the air into another room instead of the theater, or maybe into the air return to the furnace, it will make temperature control within the theater easier as well.

Greg

My rack is set up with a 2U perforated plate at the bottom and a middle atlantic 2U exhaust fan at the top. It monitors the temp and controls fan speed as necessary. I would be surprised if you needed fans on both the intake and the exhaust. If you can swing it budget wise, I would think a fan controller would be useful, especially if the rack is in your theater room. This should help reduce fan noise. If you can vent the air into another room instead of the theater, or maybe into the air return to the furnace, it will make temperature control within the theater easier as well.

GregI definitely cannot afford the Middle Atlantic fan setup. They want a ridiculous amount for them! Plus, some other guy here said they were pretty noisy. My total setup with the fan controller, 2 80mm fans, one 120mm fan and 120V ac to 12V DC power supply should cost no more than $80 or so(I hope!):o

Someone's going to give more practical advice than me, but I'm thinking of using a flexduct from the rack closet out to an adjacent room. One tip I found that I hope to use is to put the fan on the far end of the duct (i.e. in the other room) and let it suck. I think the fans work better sucking as opposed to pushing, and it gets any noise from the fans out of the room. Of course, your adjacent rooms would have to allow for this.I thought about putting the fan at the far end of the flex, but I wanted to keep the fan in the closet to help with any noise issues. And with this setup, it is still sucking the air from the rack(I think). As far as venting goes, putting it into another room is a no-go. The closet will be on a back wall where the other side is the outside. The closest HVAC return duct is about 30 feet away in the hall. The room is pretty large so I'm hoping it won't heat it up too badly.

Just a few things in general, more detailed help would require some pictures of your setup.

Fans are (marginally) more efficient when placed at the inlet of the flow, as opposed to “sucking” air at the outlet. The difference depends a bit on just how restrictive the air passage is and a lot on the type of fan being used. That said, I wouldn’t run a setup with intake fans as the primary mover unless the entertainment cabinet was well sealed such that most/all the exhaust air was going out the exhaust port (presumably at the top) and not leaking out around the doors, etc.

I wouldn’t bother with running intake fans. If you find you need more airflow, add a second exhaust fan through the ceiling.

“Dryer ducting” is most likely not approved for installation in wall. Even if you are only going a foot or two through the ceiling of your media closet, I would used approved in-wall flex ducting.

Those axial “muffin” fans used in computers are not very good at moving air in these types of applications. They are relatively compact, and the higher frequencies that they put out are easier to attenuate than lower frequencies of some larger, slower spinning fans, but as far as airflow is concerned, they are not ideal for these kinds of applications. Not saying that you can’t get adequate cooling from them (I use them on my own media cabinet) but other fans can and will provide more airflow for the same amount of power.

There are many simple fans that you can wire into a switched outlet on your receiver that will offer plenty of airflow. And it will most likely be significantly cheaper than any of the “dedicated” electronics cooling packages I’ve seen on the market. The main advantage of the packaged setups is if you want it to look classy in a setup that will be visible.

All things being equal, I am not big on fan controllers that ramp speed up and down, the only thing worse than a constant drone is one that changes pitch every so often.

-Suntan

Agreed. Computer fans tend to not move much air...they are designed for small areas, not larger ones to move any amount of air. There is a reason that they are relatively cheap compared to other options.

Thanks for the input Suntan and John I appreciate it. The dryer ducting wouldn't really be going in the wall. All it would be doing is filling the gap between the top of my rack and the ceiling of the closet so the hot air can't get trapped in the closet. The only wall portion it would run through would be the 4" space between the drywall sheets in the ceiling of the closet. Do you know of any dedicated rack fans that are even close to being as quiet as CPU fans. I haven't found any.

As far as fans that are available to a regular DIYer, the easiest solution would be to pick up something like this:

http://www.csnceilingfans.com/asp/show_detail.asp?sku=HTF1498&PiID=3127416

and use it to ventilate the entire rack closet (don't enclose the rack if it is mounted in a closet, leave it open to the closet and exhaust the entire closet.

With some rather simple modification, and the building of an exhaust hush box, I would venture to guess that it could be made to be nearly silent from the outside theater area.

-Suntan

Now that's not a bad idea at all. Thanks Suntan!

I just went and picked up my rack, looked on top, and lo and behold there are two blanks that I can punch out for two 80MM fans. How convenient is that?