Drill holes in rack shelf to keep amp cool?


I have my first seperates system going and it sounds great but the amp gets awful warm. I was thinking about drilling some holes in the shelf it sits on right under the heat sink to get a little more air flow.

The amp is on the bottom shelf which is only a couple of inches above the floor but I figure it would help a little.

Anyone tried this?

Mark
mhedges
Your amp needs some air flow & I'm guessing from your description that the back of the shelf is up against a wall? If not, I would remove the back of whatever you're using to get some flow thru. I would think the easiest thing to do would be move the rack away from the wall. If it is against the wall, then some holes in the shelf itself would be beneficial, provided you don't compromise the strength & integrity of the shelf. Also consider holes in the sides of the rack.

I keep my amp on the top shelf of my rack so it is completely exposed to air on all sides & it sits on isolation devices so there's some air flow underneath too. I have an old wooden rack that has been beefed up to support 500 lbs. of gear. I've had a Pass 350 & Threshold S300 up there at the same time.

One more thing you might want to consider is a low speed fan that operates on batteries. You may be able to position it behind the amp w/o drilling any holes just to get some air moving. The same holds true for an electrical fan like something out of a computer but noise may be a factor. There are some fans designed for low speed/low noise that may work ok.
Since heat rises and the bottom of the amp is probably closed I don't think it would help much. I would investigate good quality cooling fans: otherwise I would put it on the top shelf. I know that this is inconvenient to a degree as you have more trouble loading recordings but you don't appear to have enough space for the amp to cool as it is now.
What kind of amp?First things first.I hate generalyzing[sp] unnecessaryly,thanks,Bob
USblues is right... more detail would be helpful.

Anyway, I have a couple of extra whisper quiet fans... if your intersted shoot me an email.