When the load increases and the heatsinks heat up, what do you do with an amp with a tiny heatsink? I have a Parts Express 120-watt subwoofer amplifier (hardly audiophile quality, but I like it quite well) driving a Blueprint 1001 10" long-excursion subwoofer, and it causes my amp to heat up.
My cooling solution is pretty cool (no pun intended) expecially when you consider that it's only improvised. I have taken two 8cm biscuit fans (like the kind you find in your computer's power supply) and arranged them over the big heatsink. However, I still noticed that the power transformer was still heating up more than I would have liked. The transformer was mounted underneath the panel with some thermal transfer material, so I took an old heatsink and fan that used to be on my computer's processor and squirted some thermal goo on the bottom, and stuck it to the panel. I have noticed that this keeps my amp much cooler than it used to be. One might think that running two 80mm fans like that would be noisy, but my little AC adapter that I'm using for the fans lets me switch the voltange to anything from 1.5v to 12v. Right now the fans are running on 4.5v (the motors stall at anything less) and my amp is quite cool. When I'm watching movies or listening to loud music, I turn the fans up to 6v or 7.5v. But when I turn the entire setup all the way up to 12v it sounds like a jet ready for takeoff.
I hope you enjoyed this suggestion for low-noise fan cooling: oversized fans running slow.
My cooling solution is pretty cool (no pun intended) expecially when you consider that it's only improvised. I have taken two 8cm biscuit fans (like the kind you find in your computer's power supply) and arranged them over the big heatsink. However, I still noticed that the power transformer was still heating up more than I would have liked. The transformer was mounted underneath the panel with some thermal transfer material, so I took an old heatsink and fan that used to be on my computer's processor and squirted some thermal goo on the bottom, and stuck it to the panel. I have noticed that this keeps my amp much cooler than it used to be. One might think that running two 80mm fans like that would be noisy, but my little AC adapter that I'm using for the fans lets me switch the voltange to anything from 1.5v to 12v. Right now the fans are running on 4.5v (the motors stall at anything less) and my amp is quite cool. When I'm watching movies or listening to loud music, I turn the fans up to 6v or 7.5v. But when I turn the entire setup all the way up to 12v it sounds like a jet ready for takeoff.
I hope you enjoyed this suggestion for low-noise fan cooling: oversized fans running slow.