I have my HTPC and the amplifiers inside a cabinet in the living room. The cabinet is well wentilated and has a specially mounted fan in the bottom to push air though it.
I have described the cabinet here and the mounting of the fan here. To put it short the fan is mounted in rubber bands to eliminate vibrations and noise.
However, I should have said “was mounted”. The problem is that rubber bands need maintenance. Of course I could try to find better quality rubber bands, but I have choosen another soultion. It works fine so far, so I decided to post a little “How-to” for the people that might want to build something similar.
To fix this mess I used a perforated strip and some parts from a kit for silencing fans and hard drives:
Mounting the fan using these parts you get rid of nearly all vibrations and can have a fan that push a lot of air through your cabinet. I’ll let the pictures talk for themselves and keep the comment option open for the people that have questions.
eirikso 
[…] But, I have my amplifier inside a cabinet. I could of course buy some kind of IR repeater to catch the remote signal outside the cabinet and beam it out inside to the amplifier. But hey, the MCE remote reciever can be programmed as well, and it even includes a IR blaster to do exactly what you want: beam out IR signals to control a set top box (…or an amplifier). […]
Hahaha this is the ugliest mounting of a fan i’ve ever seen…where is your sence of estethics man..??
🙂
Yes, ugly and silent.
As you can see, everything is inside the cabinet. Lots of aestetics outside of the cabinet, absolutely no focus on aestetics inside…
You´ve got kids? Securety latches on the doors. How do you get time for these projects? Silent suffering wife? Beware!
Wow. A very observant reader! Yes, those are security latches. To keep my two small boys away from the equipment.
…and the time? I think my own amount of sleep is suffering the most…
And I also spend time on stuff that is good for the whole family:
http://www.eirikso.com/2006/04/02/how-to-make-a-cool-chair-for-your-kids/
🙂
Nice to hear that someone manage to do both the fun and the right things when having a family 🙂 Me my self got a lot more ideas than I´ve got time to realize. Ahh retirement and grown up kids, that will be the day…
🙂 The problem of amount of time vs. amount of ideas seems to be quite common. But after all, having too many ideas is good! Way better than having no ideas at all…
[…] Update: I needed to change the mounting I have described in this article. More on that here: The Silence of the fans […]
[…] Silence the computer […]
Very nice! This is exactly what I’ve been wanting to do for a year now. I have two low, wide cabinets under a screen similar to your top photo. I have a (very hot) amp inside one of the cabinets, some other components, and soon a HTPC (just bought a LixSystem today).
My question is… do you have a photo of what the fan looks like from the bottom (outside of the cabinet)? I saw your reference to a filter but can’t figure out how it attaches / looks. If this is not possible I understand.
I had always assumed I need to underpressure my cabinet because the amp is mounted near the top inside the unit and I thought I need to give somewhere for the heat to go. But I appreciate your comment about dust, and so I suppose I could have a fan blowing in from the bottom (with a filter) and blowing out right next to the amp (at the top).
Thank you!!
A very unfocused picture of the bottom of the cabinet here. The installation is quite simple: a big sheet of filter mounted over the fan with duct tape… 🙂
The filter is something that is intended for vacuum cleaners. The ones that you can cut into the right shape yourself.
very nice set up i got a dell xps gen 2 that is my whole media set up with 2gb’s of ram any dvd or any thing else that needs to be played will play and i can make the sound go thru my 2 bookshelf speakers and sub in my room but its not in a cabcabinet or any thing
the computer is on a metal rack like you see in fast food places but its smaller its about 12 by 24 and the case fits very nice on it and its on wheels and the sound goes in to a pach cable i got at radio shack that splits a head phone in to a red and white cable and that is a input on my amp thats in the coner of my room
still looking for a nice 30 or so inch tv with dvi for the screen right now its a 20 inch dell lcd screen that looks really good but is kinda small
Have any picture of this creature Speedo?
i do but its just a messy room lol the amp is 200 watt with 2 sony book shelf speakers with 16 gage monster wire i got a vcr to my tv in card so i can rip movies to dvd and i can rec tv also from the cable line i got a 9800 xt gfx card so all the video’s play with out any problem a dvd burner and cd and dvd burner and duel hard drives one a 10,000 rpm maxtor and in total 11 fans in it lol but its not loud theres a light buzz when its been under a load for a long time like doing video or image editing but when any music or move is playing you dont hear it.
i am just about to turn 18 and i have had this for about 4 years now
Processor:Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.40GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory:2GB RAM
Hard Drives:250 GB,7200 RPM and 78GB,10,000 RPM
Video Card:RADEON 9800 XT (Omega 3.8.330)
Sound Card:SB Audigy 2 Audio [CD80]
Speakers:5.1
Keyboard:Wireless
Mouse:Wireless
just took the following
[IMG]http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b171/gotspeed1212/PICT0101.jpg[/IMG]
you can see the back of the vcr in the bottem right of this one
[IMG]http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b171/gotspeed1212/PICT0102.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b171/gotspeed1212/PICT0103.jpg[/IMG]
the laptop is a 1.6 ghz d600 latitude that i picked up just over a year ago with a gig of ram and a 40 gig hard drive. also if you look at the router its full. the white case next to the chair is for downloading bigg bigg files and theres a few other computers in the house this is just my little slice of heaven.
its also nice to be the one in the house with the brains the router is set up so that the xps is top dog any thing it sends or receives from the net is the first thing thru every thing else stops heres why that is so nice 🙂
[IMG]http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b171/gotspeed1212/mynetspeed-1.jpg[/IMG]
Where could you get those parts for silencing your fans? I’m looking to do a similar setup but inside a small closet where my components are in. Thanks!
Where did you find the perforated strip?
At my local shop for tools. Clas Ohlson here in Norway. In the US I would try Home Depot.