Receiver heat issues? (1 Viewer)

[barneygumble]

I went to my local electronics store to demo the onkyo receiver I plan on getting soon. Music played for a while, then I felt the top of it. That bastard gets hot.

Do receiver have any heat issues? I'm putting the receiver in a slot in my entertainment center and there will not be too much headroom (~2") for heat dissipation. Will it benefit from adding a few 80mm PC fans to draw heat away from the receiver?

 

[John Garcia]

2" is probably not enough, however if your rack has an open back, it should be OK. If you have issues where it actually shuts down, then yes fans can be used. I wouldn't worry about it until you actually have the receiver and try it out in your system.

 

[barneygumble]

I guess my biggest question is, just for knowing, does excess heat have the potential of damaging my receiver? So you say it shuts down, is this a safety feature built into receivers or does it shut down because of failure?

 

[John Garcia]

Nearly all recent receivers have thermal overload protection these days, so yes it is built in. Yes, excessive heat has the potential to damage any electronic component.

 

[Shane Harg]

...but the amount of heat you feel from the top of the receiver is no indication of danger or that it is even close to overload shut-down. If the top of your receiver is hot, that's a sign that it is dissipating heat, and that's a good thing.

I keep a decorative cloth thrown over my Yamaha RX-V2600 to keep dust from getting in through the vents when not in use, because it stays out in the open. The problem comes when I forget to take that off before watching a movie. I have left it on about a handful of times for the duration of a film, but it has never gotten so hot as to shut itself down. I'm worried more about the cloth catching fire in such a case. LOL.

 

[John Garcia]

I do the same thing covering my receiver and integrated amp, and I have also forgotten the cloth a few times without issue, however he needs to try this receiver in his exact setup with his speakers and see how it actually does. A certain amount of heat is normal for certain, as heat is a byproduct of amplification, so there is no getting around that, but the question is whether or not it will be an issue in your particular situation. My guess is it will be fine.

 

[LanceJ]

I own a Technics receiver which have been known for years for producing enough heat to practically fry an egg even when just idling (they have a "semi" Class A power amp design which means, well, that will get us too off-topic so never mind ). Anyway, my SA-DA8 is now almost six years old and is used basically every day for at least five hours during all that time: despite all the heat generated the receiver stills works fine (unfortunately the treble and balance controls started getting noisy last year).

Any decent manufacturer is going to take into account any such temperature issues and design the rest of the component accordingly. For example think about the computers used in cars: many operate perfectly for years in some of the absolute worst environments possible, including heat that can reach nearly 200 degrees for hours.

Just do what the Onkyo manual says and like John said, don't worry about this issue until something bad *actually* happens.

 

[John Garcia]

My Marantz PM7200 also is a "semi" class A amp (can be run in class A or AB) and if I run it in pure class A mode, it gets extremely hot as well. In the manual it states this is perfectly normal. A typical class A/B amp doesn't get as hot though.