DIY A/V rack? - Page 8

The draft of the design has all the air is being pushed under then and then behind the components. I do not see much cooling happening. As stated you have to get cooling through the components. Even just putting holes in the shelves will only allow natural convection to occur through the components. Air will take the path of least resistance and this draft plan allows the cool air to bypass all the equipment.

The design I am working on will pressurize the volume between the front door and the components with fresh cool air. Air will be drawn from this front plenum underneath each component. Each component will be sealed from the back, creating a rear plenum that will be under negative pressure (or fans attached to the heat producing equipment). This way cool fresh air is drawn from the front plenum, up and through the equipment, to the rear plenum where it gets exhausted. The air is used once and expelled. This is a push pull design (as stated above) but controls the flow for maximum cooling.

I may use blank 2U panels with 60mm fans mounted in it, underneath the hottest equipment, to help push and control where the air goes from the front plenum.

All, I am finishing the framing in my dedicated theater. I plan on mounting my equipment in a flushmount rack that I would like to make myself. The walls have 2x4 studs 16 O.C.. As far as equipment I plan on an Integra AVR, probably an Emotiva amp, Xbox 360/720, PS3/4, 2 Directv boxes, Power conditioner of some type, AppleTv2. If i want to do this all for < $500 what would be the best route? I will have access behind the rack.

The fans in the back would be nice since the front is open. You could also place fans on one side and place vent(s) or holes on the other side to create more air movement.

Me three? Looks great!

This is my completed DIY AV Cabinet. It is a birch plywoof frame, primed and painted. The door is a poplar frame with wire mesh. Very simple as I subscribe to KISS method for DIY.

For more pictures head on over to my DIY budget minded home theater thread.
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1444378/joker-room-build-thread#post_22804599

I like how no one mentioned to actually turn the power off first....

Might as well put this in this thread. My current room doesn't really have any place to put a full-sized rack, so I built a minimal freestanding one from scratch. It leaves all of the cables lying exposed but has worked out pretty well:



It looks like it has a bit of a twist in the photo but that's just a lens artifact. It's mostly built from 80/20 aka "the industrial erector set": straight pieces of slotted aluminum and various fasteners. If/when I don't need it any longer, a few minutes with a screwdriver and hex wrench can turn it back into a pile of generic parts:



Ideally I would have used black extrusions for everything but they're a little harder to get, plus by using stock lengths I didn't have to cut anything. There are standard rack rails bolted to the vertical extrusions, so once it was sized properly the shelves and equipment from my old in-wall rack attached with no trouble. I put felt pads undeneath the bottom pieces so the metal isn't actually touching/scratching the wood floor.

Better to just get the right tool to cut them and get the look you really want. One great way to do this is scour craigslist for a miter or chop saw. Use the saw for as long as you need and then turn around and sell it back on craigslist.

All you'd have to buy would be the correct and new blade for cutting your material. Don't assume the blade a saw will come with will be correct or anything but dull as a butter knife.

I hesitate to admit that I actually have a miter saw and specialty blades for cutting aluminum extrusions, but at the time it was all buried in a very cluttered garage building (detached and unheated) after a house move. I knew the only way to get the rack built in a timely manner was to use off-the-shelf lengths. In fact it's been almost 2 years and I still don't have the saw set up; I've cleared out enough of the mess that there is theoretically enough floor space to do it, but there's a lot of other things higher up on the to-do list.

I'll have to take some shots with a flash but here is the concept. I have one more shelf to add which will make it harder to see the speaker wire in the cable D-Rings on the left.





In hindsight I would have painted the "door" frame before I wrapped it.