How can I put a fan in a piece of furniture?

[hugh]

In my family room, I have a piece of furniture/cabinet that my tv sits on.

Inside the furniture is an A/V Receiver, PS3, SlingCatcher, and a Network switch.

This generates a lot of heat.

I would like to create a hole in the back of the cabinet and attach the equivalent of a computer fan that can exhaust the hot air.

Any suggestions on how I might do this?

Thanks in advance

[phaeton]

You could always try a 5v pc fan hooked up to a USB connector and plugged into your PS3's usb port and just exhaust it out back.

[nickleinonen]

grab a large pc fan from a parts store [sayal, tigerdirect, etc..] and find an old wall wart power supply that puts out ±9vdc and do a cut and splice on the leads.. full 12v will work too but could be loud. if you have one of those multi tap ones you can get the variable voltage to them. you can also get fans that are about 5" that are similar to the pc fans but designed for industrial PLC panels. they run off 120vac. some are pretty quiet and some are super loud. on my old enclosed equip. rack i had a 6" 12vdc fan running on 9vdc sucking the air out of my rack from the top and i had a smaller 3" one blowing air into the back of my avr fed from the same power supply. under load [loud movies] the fan in my avr would at times kick in and it was loud. with the extra fans running when the avr was powered the internal avr fan never kicked in.

[ctown6412]

if you like you could buy a thermal senstive fan that way it only runs when it gets hot enough in the cabinet too.

since its for venting you should consider a large diameter fan as well as they run quiter

[richardharvie]

I bought a 120 volt, 4 inch mmetal fan to cool down my 5900 pvr.
I just have the fan blowing across the pvr and my receiver /
After 5 minutes both of the units are cool to the touch and the heat problem is gone
Oakvillerick

[richardharvie]

The fan was only $6 at Walmart
Oakvillerick

[ScaryBob]

I cut holes in the back of the cabinet about 3.5"x16" top and bottom, behind the AV receiver and top shelf. Then I mounted 2 low RPM fans on 90° angle brackets near each end of the top hole, blowing out. The angle brackets were attached to the main cabinet frame, not the thin back, to reduce noise. Then I took a couple of 4 pin to 3 pin PC fan adapters and attached the 3 pin ends to a 6v DC power block with small insulated crimp connectors. 6v blocks actually put out about 9v at low load so it works well, with the fans in "quiet mode.". Most PC fans will start and run at 5v anyway. I plugged the power block into a switched outlet on the back of the AV receiver. That's the biggest heat source and is usually on when anything else is so it works out well. Antec has some fans with 3 speed switches that may be better than single speed fans. I used some Fan Mate speed controllers for awhile before I could get some truly quiet low speed fans. This system has been in place for about 8 years so it does work Ok. The cabinet was completely sealed before I cut the holes and installed the fans so it was quite toasty in there before the mod.

[hugh]

Thanks for some good ideas guys, I will investigate in the coming week.