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[tedtropy]

I recently purchased an Onkyo 600W receiver with a home theater setup and have it presently placed inside my TV cabinet. It's got about 2 inches of clearance at the top and as it does its thing, and especially when I'm blaring a nice 5.1 DTS DVD movie it obviously gets a little warm. It's not 9800 Pro "my fucking fingers are melting!" warm, but it can put out its fair share of heat. I find it funny that my 300W power supply has a fan, yet most receivers I see are completely passively cooled. My question is, is it pretty common for receivers to get rather warm, and do you think it's ok inside a cabinet. I never slide the glass door in front of it and I tend to keep my room moderately cool. Thanks.

 

[Drensch]

Yes they get warm. Not hot, but warm. Of course it never hurts to have more ventialtion.

 

[aoi tsuki]

Yeah, i've got an Onkyo receiver that gets hot as well. From what i've read, it helps if you get a lower gauge (thicker) wire than the standard stock spaghetti wires.

 

[Shompola]

Mine gets very warm. It's pretty normal yes. A little bit of ventilation will help it of course.
Just don't put stuff on it like your dvdplayer. It will destroy the laser if you do that.
And there are a few receivers that do use fans.. but a lot of them only use huge heatsinks instead. I prefer a silent receiver without a fan

And please don't close that cabinet door when the receiver is in use hehe.

 

[B'z-chan]

I can turn thin crust breat into thin crust toast and it does a great job of melting cheese on my sandwhiches. But i think thats cause my fan might be broken. Plus mine overloads all the damn time during theater sound, so i have to keep it low 25-35% power range.

 

[tedtropy]

Mine gets very warm. It's pretty normal yes. A little bit of ventilation will help it of course.
Just don't put stuff on it like your dvdplayer. It will destroy the laser if you do that.
And there are a few receivers that do use fans.. but a lot of them only use huge heatsinks instead. I prefer a silent receiver without a fan

And please don't close that cabinet door when the receiver is in use hehe.

Oh I'm glad it doesn't have a fan - I hate noisy cooling solution and am on a never ending quest to coax my PC into shutting the hell up. As for the glass door, I only use it in front of my DVD player and XBox to muffle any noise they put out. My XBox especially is one noisy little shit and doesn't really get too warm with the glass in front of it. It actually does a great job on cutting down their noise.

 

[tedtropy]

I can turn thin crust breat into thin crust toast and it does a great job of melting cheese on my sandwhiches. But i think thats cause my fan might be broken. Plus mine overloads all the damn time during theater sound, so i have to keep it low 25-35% power range.

I think they should add a little EZ Bake oven slot in them. Get my gaming on while toasting a Pop Tart...

 

[Truelize]

I have a Harmon Kardon and in my manual it suggested at least 6 inches of clearance above the reciever to make sure it doesn't overheat. Mine still get's warm though, not hot to the touch or anything though. So it's reasonable to think that only having 2 inches of clearance might increase how hot it feels when you touch it. I would just make sure you never close the front, and if the back isn't already open I suggest cutting it open (thinking that that is the place you've decided you will keep your reciever) to create some airflow in that spot.

 

[Error Macro]

Yeah, dude, two inches of clearance is NOT enough. Give that thing some breathing room, or don't cry when your new receiver burns up.

 

[fart]

audio amplifiers typically have very large passive radiators for cooling, as well as increased surface area to cool over monolithic silicon. fans aren't really an option in an appliance like that not only because it's an audio device (duh), but because the lack of moving parts is generally a design goal for reliability. they also have higher acceptable junction temperatures because of the scale of the silicon is extremely large (since they're analog, high power parts).

oh, also, if you were to actually try to get that thing to output 600 watts into an active load for any period of time, you'd probably melt something.

 

[tedtropy]

Yeah, dude, two inches of clearance is NOT enough. Give that thing some breathing room, or don't cry when your new receiver burns up.

I can adjust the shelf space or just remove the top one above it completely, but I'm trying to tread the line between my receiver not burning my house down and my cabinet not looking ghetto. Even as it, it doesn't get what I'd call "cause to be alarm" hot, but then again, I'm not a receiver...

 

[tedtropy]

audio amplifiers typically have very large passive radiators for cooling, as well as increased surface area to cool over monolithic silicon. fans aren't really an option in an appliance like that not only because it's an audio device (duh), but because the lack of moving parts is generally a design goal for reliability. they also have higher acceptable junction temperatures because of the scale of the silicon is extremely large (since they're analog, high power parts).

oh, also, if you were to actually try to get that thing to output 600 watts into an active load for any period of time, you'd probably melt something.

Well, it's 600W peak, not RMS, so I doubt it's pushing that kind of wattage for any sustained period of time.

 

[Lil' Dice]

I recently purchased an Onkyo 600W receiver with a home theater setup and have it presently placed inside my TV cabinet. It's got about 2 inches of clearance at the top and as it does its thing, and especially when I'm blaring a nice 5.1 DTS DVD movie it obviously gets a little warm. It's not 9800 Pro "my fucking fingers are melting!" warm, but it can put out its fair share of heat. I find it funny that my 300W power supply has a fan, yet most receivers I see are completely passively cooled. My question is, is it pretty common for receivers to get rather warm, and do you think it's ok inside a cabinet. I never slide the glass door in front of it and I tend to keep my room moderately cool. Thanks.

I have the same receiver, but also have >10" of clearance above it, i've never had it get too warm. I'm also pretty sure it would shut itself off if it got too hot. I think the manual mentions something to the effect.

 

[NohWun]

I had an older Sony Pro-Logic receiver that got downright hot.

When I just got it, I put a VCR on top of it. One night the VCR started acting all screwy, and in fact when I pressed "play" it instead recorded garbage over my Fantasia tape. When I pulled the VCR off the receiver, it felt like pulling a pizza from the oven.

These days, class-D (digital) amplifier seem to have taken care of excess heat problem. Do any of them sound decent?

 

[Error Macro]

The current digital receivers apparently get just as hot as analog models.

 

[fart]

class-d amplifiers are not digital amplifiers. true digital amplifiers are quite a bit more efficient. that doesn't necessarily mean they will run cooler though, just that they need less sinking.