My wife and I recently moved into a new house. we have a builtin cabinet next to the wall where we have our TV. It appears to be perfect for holding AV equipment. My eventual goal is to removed the shelving that is built into the bottom of the cabinet and replace it with a rack system to hold the equipment. As a temporary measure, I want to put a receiver, a DVD player, a TiVo and a HTPC in the cabinet.

This leads to three questions
1. Is it okay to put a TiVo on top of the DVD player, or vice versa (3 shelves - 4 pieces of equipment)
2. The shelves are solid wood, with only a approximate 3/8 " gap running along the back of the shelf. Should I drill holes into the shelves to improve airflow (how many, what size, what pattern)?
3. The side of the cabinet abuts the wall separating the living area from the garage. Should I consider drilling a hole in the cabinet and wall to vent the cabinet into the garage, or would I get enough air flow out of a 1/2 " vent cut the length of the top of the cabinet along the back of the shelving area. If I go with a fan, should I look at 120 mm computer fans, or go for a 4" duct fan?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Does this cabinet have a door on the front (I assume it does since you're concerned about ventilation)?

If it does, I think I would use either 1 or 2 120mm fans to vent out the back (or perhaps one bringing air in and the other blowing out). If you do a google search or a forum search you should come up with instructions for wiring these fans into a RadioShack power adapter which you can plug into a switched outlet on your receiver so they only run when the receiver is on.

Unfortunately it is a builtin cabinet. The back of the cabinet is against an outside wall. The one side of the cabinet is against the garage (which is un-airconditioned down here in TX) so I don't know if I want to draw hot air in from there. I could use fans to push air out into the garage, and hope the various gaps in the cabinet (including milled into the bottom of about 3/8") can allow enough air into the cabinet.

The only other question in my mind then is what to do about the shelves. Does drilling holes in the shelves to allow air flow from shelf to shelf seem like over kill?

Thanks for the advice on the fan/adapter/receiver Seth. I forgot about the switched outlets. Oh, and to answer your question, yes it has doors on the front.

Brian

I had a similar situation with a built in rack. I only had front access. I ended up using 19" rack rails and then installing a vent on the lower section and a fan 2U module blowing out on the upper part. Convection will move hot air up and the fans just help keep in moving and sent it out. My glass door was replaced with stretched fabric. I almost forgot - I put the hot items near the top. The air movement is more effective near it and your not heating up all the rest of your components.

I posted picture in a thread called "one rack alternative" if you'd like to see what I'm trying to explain.

Grant

Thanks for the tip on the fabric cover. I'll have to go to the wife and see what her thoughts are on replacing the door with fabric.

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The fabric approach is not a good idea. It doesn't really work. You cannot force airflow through the fabric. I would really recommend against that. Unless of course your fabric has 1/8" holes in it ;)

Also it would be against code to vent into the garage. Something about car fumes.... Plus it doesn't sound like an option given the heat you have.

I had the exact same problem you did. I have a built in which has an external wall and a fireplace to one side. I didn't want to have an additional vent on the top of the wall above the cabinet and pipe the air back into that. I actually went with an external fan that sucks the air out of the back of the cabinet (this you cannot see). I think will have a vent in the kickplate of the cabinet and holes in each shelf. I would position the holes around the vents in the equipment. You can see where this is. You can also caulk the shelves to make sure the air intake flows up through the center of the cabinet.

I went with a Active Thermal Management (www.activethermal.com) System 1 external with a speed control and thermostat. Works well. I have construction pictures of this on my thread. Hope it's of use.

You could use the ATM Cube and pipe the air back into the room above the cabinet if you can run the pipe etc. Picture might help.

Have I got this right? You have an enclosed space with three solid shelves, solid doors and no way to vent the space to the side or back. I agree --garage bad a fire rated wall with no openings is required between a garage and living space.

Does the enclosed space run essentially floor to ceiling, or is there space above and below the door frame or opening through which you could vent back into the room.

Could you accept an exhaust vent cut into the door or door frame at the top and a like sized vent at the bottom for intake? You can buy both round and horizontal grills in various sizes, as well as use parallel saw cuts or neatly spaced and drilled holes, say of a half inch or so. If you do not have fans to circulate the air then you will want to drill a good many holes underneath each component. If you use fans you will still need openings but may get by fewer of them.

An open weave fabric (one that you can easily blow through) will pass quite a volume of air, and will be an effective filter (dust catcher) but it will I can't see how it would work well with small fans or to set up a convective cooling flow.

Reviving an old thread instead of starting a new one...

I just built a small rack to hold a small amount of equipment. AVR, STB, a DVD recorder and a network media player. The rack is open on the front and mostly open on the back. The "slot" for my AVR has about an inch of clearance on the sides and the top. For this slot, I built a hinged door on the back and built two 80mm fans into the door to keep the air moving.

Here's a picture:
http://tatanka02.home.comcast.net/stereo/dsc_2862_std.jpg

My question -- how does one know if it's cool enough? Using a highly scientific method (probe from a cheap indoor/outdoor thermometer), it looks like the temperature tops out at about 108F on top of the receiver. Is this reasonable?