Amp Camp Amp - ACA

Finished both the amps. Bias is showing 10.05v for both the channels after 2 hours. The heatsinks I am using measures 195mmX100mmX32mm. It became very hot after 2 hours of contentious playback. At room temperature, I could not not put my fingers on them for more than 10 seconds. Btw, the weather is very hot in my city (41-42 deg celsius).
After I turned on the AC, the temperature of the heatsinks went down.

Should I upgrade the sinks?

ed4824ce47885b18bc418dc6105e1a9d.jpg


Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
 
One more change that should help keep temp. down is to invert the heat sinks so that the side where the mosfets are mounted is at the bottom meeting the fresh air first.

Regards

Good eye. Yes they do need inverting. Heat rises and the rule is to mount transistors on the bottom 1/3rd of the heat sink. You have them mounted about 1/3rd but now at the top 1/3rd. Invert as cochleus noticed.
 
I've built a few ACAs. Each one has sinks that are about 200mm wide by 80mm tall and 40mm deep. The mosfets are attached at the bottom of the sinks (inverted from what you've shown in your image) and the chassis elevates the bottom of the sinks about 1-2cm above the table top, so this improves airflow through the sinks a bit. Both run quite well at about 45-50c in a room that is about 25c. If you want cooler sinks, you'll need larger ones. Some people use Class A amps more in the winter months than during the summer. Of course, you've found a viable solution as well...
 
Last edited:
So I'm building my ACA (turbo) as dual mono with 32volt supplies. My original plan was to have the PSU in a separate housing with a single transformer with dual secondaries feeding separate unregulated CRC filters. The same housing would have a 12v transformer for the cooling fans. xrk971 recommended a single 32v SMPS and tapping into the main rail supply with a 7812 regulator to deliver the power for the fans. I like the simplicity of that, but I would rather have separate supplies for the channels.

The question is, will tapping into one of the supply rails risk introducing noise or have other detrimental effects on the amp's performance?