Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Brian Jojade]

Vented racks would be useful for devices that use passive cooling, eg effects racks or wireless racks, where there are no fans within the devices.

For devices that have directional cooling, paying attention to where the air is flowing is an important consideration.

QSC amps use the mentality that they will pull air from inside the rack and send it out the front as to not heat the internals of the rack enclosure. Others use the mentality that they pull cool air from outside of the rack and send it inside, assuming that you have proper ventilation designed to release the hot air out the backside of the rack.

Some equipment pulls air from the left side of the rack and exhausts on the right side, and vice versa.

Essentially, what it boils down to is that there's no one standard that everyone uses.  When building racks, this all needs to be taken into consideration on how to best assemble things so that stuff stays properly cooled.  This may mean separating devices that use different cooling flows so that they play together nicely with their partners.

In the case of your matching amps, more airflow is definitely better, but to be effective, that airflow needs to go THROUGH the amps, not through that open space. A solid cover helps guarantee that the airflow goes in the amps and out the back and doesn't end up recirculating through the space and go back into the amp.

[Keith Broughton]

I think I would put the panel between the amps.  It will give more room for air to circulate.

Then you have to support the rear of the upper amp.
I built racks with Powersoft amps, 3 stacked, and they ran cool under full load.

[Helge A Bentsen]

That's the sort of information that SHOULD be in the RTFM.....
Chris.

It is.

Powersoft recommends 1U spacing after four tight packed K-series amps. They are slightly larger than 1U, so if you mount more than 4 tight packed, they don't align properly with the rack mounts.

4 amps tight packed - 1U space - Next 4 amps - 1U and so on.

If you have less than 4 amps, no spacing is needed.
Also, be aware that a few models from Powersoft will overheat if you try to run them without covers, the airflow through the amp is disrupted if you take the covers off. I found that out with one I bench tested, it overheated without load.

[John Schalk]

Powersoft recommends 1U spacing after four tight packed K-series amps. They are slightly larger than 1U, so if you mount more than 4 tight packed, they don't align properly with the rack mounts.

4 amps tight packed - 1U space - Next 4 amps - 1U and so on.

If you have less than 4 amps, no spacing is needed.

Thanks Helge.  Based on that, and the other advice in this thread, I will install solid blank panels in the top spaces of my racks.

FWIW I can't move one amp up to leave a space between them because of the spacing in the rack.  I actually tested that out and I could not operate the Neutrik connectors on the top amp because there wasn't enough space to get a finger in to operate the lock.  For that reason I purchased 3 space racks with the intention of leaving the top space unused to leave room to make the connections to the amps easy.

[Brian Jojade]

For that reason I purchased 3 space racks with the intention of leaving the top space unused to leave room to make the connections to the amps easy.

And if you want to get really fancy and make it even easier to access connectors, re-tool the rack rails so that you have a half space on top and half on bottom, centering the amps within the case.  Then you just need a half blank above and below.

[ProSoundWeb Community]