PSA: That time a client's home theater in Austin taught me about heat damage

I was installing a new receiver and amp setup for a guy near downtown Austin last summer. When I pulled his old gear out of the cabinet, the thermal paste on the chips had turned to dust and the capacitors were bulging. The whole rack was stuffed in a closed cabinet with no airflow. Some guys say heat sinks and fans are overkill for home audio gear, but I just saw $3,000 in fried parts. Do you think a few extra vents or a small vent fan is worth the hassle, or do you leave it up to the customer?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_anthony8d ago

That line about "some guys say heat sinks and fans are overkill" used to be me until I had a similar wake up call. I thought a few gaps around the gear would be enough, but after seeing thermal paste turn to dust like that I slap a quiet 120mm fan in every cabinet I touch now. It's a cheap fix that keeps the customer from coming back with a blown amp and a bad attitude.

the_joseph7d ago

Catch yourself on the dust thing though - thermal paste doesn't really turn to dust from heat, it usually cooks off or gets brittle and cracks. The real issue is that the heat cycling (you know, gear warming up and cooling down over and over) makes the paste lose its ability to fill those tiny gaps between the chip and the heat sink. Still a good reminder that passive cooling with just gaps is a gamble, I've seen way too many amps cook themselves because someone thought airflow would just magically happen.

rose_cooper7d ago

Pull the old gear out of a cabinet that's fully enclosed with no airflow at all and tell me that's not a slow death sentence for expensive electronics. I've seen it too many times where customers think because it's a nice piece of furniture it'll be fine, then they're shocked when the amp goes into protection mode or just dies altogether. So here's my question for you - when you do add a fan, do you wire it to a thermostatic switch that kicks on at a certain temperature, or do you just run it constant and let the customer deal with the noise? Because I've had some guys swear by the constant low-speed approach, but I've also had customers complain about even a whisper of fan noise in a dedicated theater room.

-1