Custom AV cabinet: Sound Isolated and Cooled

none of those items need active cooling.

they will operate nicely at temps that will distort the pastic on the xbox.

Without air conditioning, computers (including the xbox, mac mini, and NAS) in a small space will overheat and fail.

At my startup we learned that one the hardway when we discovered that the building owners' turning down the air conditioning over the weekend was enough to kill (we did have a few dozen) machines in a small office (which should be a lot more than a few dozen times bigger than an entertainment cabinet). We had to add a portable air conditioner.

The receiver probably has thermal shutdown which will work when its big heat producers get too hot.

a few dozen at several hundred watts each is much different than 4 consumer components at room temperature.

i'm guessing you guys had servers fail also, likely with several hard drives each.....(how many hard drives were in your small room? 100?)......

I have my rx/amp, htpc/xlobby server (3hds), and 12 channel amp all on all the time in less than a cubic yard cabinet and the temp doesnt go above 90 with everything running, doors closed....for weeks.....just not consuming enough watts.

To build a custom, sound proof, air conditioned enclosure for xbox/mac mini, nas is such an overkill extravagance that i'm sure he will have to design it on his own and report back to us....you could just go for quiter PS/hard drives and call it a day (in future upgrades)....i cant hear my htpc with 3 hard drives from 3 feet away, and the entire case is aluminum (passive cooling).....

In fact....i would say that building such a custom enclosure would lead to MORE failures because the enclosure will experience positive and negative pressures which will disrupt the airflow through the components!!!!



but to stay on topic....if I was dead set on doing this.....i would build something "around" standard racks.....and rack mount everything (put the things that cant be on trays)...that way you would be able to fairly easily hide the back, where you can have your noise and ventilation....might need to get someone to custom cut some aluminium front panels for you......(to mask off any open areas).....might look neat.

Snickerbar, Just to back up your argument...

I have a small pull-out component rack. It sits in a small closet. It holds an HD-DVR, a ReplayTV, an Xbox 360 with HD-dvd drive, a DVD player, a network switch, an AVR and a subwoofer amplifier. It has a digital temperature gauge at the top. When I use any equipment besides the Xbox360 the temperature slowly creeps up from about 72-78 over 2-3 hours. When I use the Xbox360, the temperature climbs to over 84 within 30 minutes sometimes! I am in the process of installing fans. I got the ne Middle Atlantic Ultra Quiet Rack fan. But instead of putting it in the rack I am putting up high in the back wall. This wall faces another room. I know that that will give me sound leakage from the other room, but sucking the hot air out of the cabinet is a good trade-off in my opinion. Besides between the Xbox360 the DVRs and the DVD player any noise that leaks from the other room would get muted! I may put another passive vent in the bottom of the cabinet to get good cold air flow, but right now the cabinet does not have a front door, so it can suck cold air in from the HT.

Do you want some type of a free standing box that sits inside the room or is this a built-in application? Do you have any place that you can "vent" to like a crawl space, attic or separate room? Give a little more information about the specifics of what you want - maybe some pics or diagrams.

I am really interested in a similar solution to this. I am in the process of looking for a new stand but my biggest issue is my cable box/dvr. The primary cooling fam is located on the bottom of the unit and it seems to get very poor air flow to the unit. I leave it hanging off the edge of the rack a little so the fan intake vent is exposed and that helps generally. However, if the room temperature goes over 70 degrees the fan does not seem to be able to do an adequate job and the fan noise is terrible.

Unfortunately I don't have time or extra cash at this point to spend on making a unit like this at the moment, however I was thinking about making a cooling box with the extra pc cooling fans I have. Anyone have experience with that? I assume I'd need a fan controler and and power supply and the a case to put it all in. My 360 seems to fair ok, but there are a couple add on fan units, but I am not sure if they will increase the overall level of noise, which is really the goal considering it does not seem to be having cooling issues.

I have been going thru a similar experience with my a/v stand, it is a relatively low stand for a large television (60") with two cabinets on each side with glass doors and only one 2" hole on each side in the back for cables. I have a HD satellite receiver and 600w stereo receiver on one side and both my PS3 and PS2 on the other.

All of my components were getting very hot. The PS3 has a lot of the same overheating issues as the 360, it has already given me a message saying to turn off the system because it was too hot. And even both the satellite receiver and stereo receiver were getting hot. I think because there was basically no air circulating so the heat just built up.

Well I ended up putting fans in the back of both sides of the stand with temperature controllers that turn the fans on and off and has variable fan speeds based on the temperature in the cabinet. I also put passive vents in the sides of the cabinets towards the bottom to allow cool air in. My stand had a space in between the two cabinets with a drawer and a open space below the drawer. I drilled the holes in the open space below the drawer so it would not be visible from the front of the stand but would still pull cold air in from the front not the hot air I was exhausting from the rear.

The whole thing ended up costing me about $300 (two fans and two advanced temp controllers). You can cut off a lot of the cost if you do not use the temperature controllers but then your fans will always be on and running at full speed. Cool-Components(dot)com is the maker of the products I ordered but bhphotovideo(dot)com was offering them at a lower price. I hope this helps anyone looking into cooling there a/v stands. If requested (PM me) I could take some photos and upload them.