I agree, that it has no effect on life of semiconductors while it has some small effect on their performance (Mosfet transistors getting slower while bipolars getting faster). Electrolytic capacitors are affected by temperature. They simply dry-out. Each 10degC temperature increase cuts their life by 2. In addition, increase in temperature increases ESR. Cooling fan is beneficial, IMHO, as long as it is not noisy (audible and electrical noise).
Fans on amps.
Ive been checking out some posts about fans by amps but cannot find anything about them being good or bad for the amps. This is what I would like to know. Ok. I have a Krell Fpb 600 and I listen to my music about a 28-30 volume on my ARC Ref 6 which is pretty loud most of the time depending on recordings. Tonight I felt my amp like a lot of times and felt very hot like u could fry an egg on top. This is the normal with a few hrs of listening. Anyway I put a fan on the right side of amp and about a half hour later I checked the right side and was significantly cooler I mean like a night and day difference between the right and left top and heat sinks. I was wondering if adding 2 fans one on each side to cool the amp down would do more harm than good. Would I get more life out of the amp with fans ? Or are amps designed like that without using fans and just heat sinks to get rid of the heat. Btw my amp has plenty of ventilation as it is on the floor. Thanks.
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Not opining on fan or no fan, but I just discovered that there is a company that makes fans for amps and racks if you end up wanting one: https://www.acinfinity.com/ |
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I'll go with Elizabeth on this one. The only problem with fans is the noise and perhaps the added complexity. Heat sinks are big, heavy and expensive. Commercial amps virtually always use fans for all the above reasons. Krell used fans for quite a while. A cool amp will always last longer. Temperature cycling is no good for anything. Electrical conductivity decreases with temperature which is why the fastest computers do crazy things like run in refrigerated freon baths. They do all kinds of stuff to keep superconductors cold. I have no idea how all this pertains to the performance of relatively mundane devices like audio amplifiers but I use a fan cooling system on my amps. I run a 12 volt power supply off a switched AC outlet. The switch is right next to my equipment cabinet. The supply triggers all the amps and runs #4 6" fans one for each side of the two main amps. I put a 100 ohm linear pot in series with the + side of the fans so I can control the speed (noise). It all works brilliantly. Whenever I turn the amps on the fans light up automatically. The whole mess is mounted on a shelf directly under the speakers in the basement. I hooked up the pots as an afterthought. I could hear the fans running full tilt under the floor! Backing them off a bit worked fine. Oh, and if you put your amps on the floor make darn sure they are not on carpet, any type of carpet. Hard surfaces only. Any carpet will interfere with the flow of air over the heat sinks. I set up this fellows system years back. About a year later he called me up all bent out of shape because his amp died. The genius had his room redecorated and he put the amp back down on carpet. He did not know that it would take some time for it to reset itself and thought it has died permanently. An amp stand solved that problem. |
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