Is Your A/V Cabinet Cooking Your Components?

Walk into your average furniture store and you'll find an ever-growing selection of A/V cabinets, most of them adorned with plastic dummies of flat-screen TVs and DVD players. Many of these cabinets come with tight shelving and cool glass doors so you can see your shiny components flashing away. Good stuff—but unless it's properly ventilated, your slick new cabinet could end up slowly cooking your pricey hardware.

Take the A/V cabinet in my living room. The center shelves are open and allow my Onkyo receiver plenty of ventilation, but I had to juggle my DVD player and center-channel speaker so that my DVR, which cranks out plenty of heat, could sit on top. Meanwhile, my super-hot Xbox 360 lives in a side bank of shelves that's almost totally enclosed, meaning I have to open the solid-wood door whenever I want to game.

A/V furniture retailer StudioTech has an exhaustive article on the dos and don'ts of keeping your components cool, and some of the statistics are pretty alarming; for instance, if the temperature in your A/V cabinet regularly climbs above 85 degrees Fahrenheit, your components may conk out 40 percent more quickly than they would otherwise. Luckily, a lot of the tips are just common sense. For example, you should make sure your components aren't stacked too tightly, especially when it comes to receivers, which tend to run pretty hot. Also, try to pick a cabinet with generous openings in the back (rather than a few small holes for wires), side vents, and mesh doors (rather than solid wood or glass). And if your gear is still running too hot, consider installing some cooling fans; the folks at the AVS Forum have some good tips and suggestions on that front.

Related:
Keeping Your System Cool [StudioTech]
A/V cooling fan discussion [AVS Forum]