Why are my amps getting so FU**ING HOT!!!

[Savstyle 10+ year member]

Fan are the best idea ive seen in this thread. Worked for me. Summertime was average 110 or so. Car was black and amp was located about 3-5 inchs from my trunk lid. Needless to say it was a frickin oven in my trunk. 4 small fan mounted on my trunk lid firing onto the amp stopped my amp from over heating so fast. From 10-15mins to a couple of hours of consistent heavy use. Yes fans do work.

 

[stereoguy]

Yea fan it and if it dont work try ice pack n if that still dont work time for new amps..

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

Well the general theme here seems to be fans so maybe I'll try that out one of these days.

And everyone talking about it being summer and 115 degree outside...I live in Victoria, BC and it doesn't get THAT hot here. Its only 66-70 degrees here today

 

[des343 10+ year member]

Hey guys.
So i have a 2 amp setup. An AQ 200.2 (220w x2@4ohms), running a pair of Focal PS165 components in the front doors getting roughly 85W or LESS each from this amp.

I also have a RF T2500-1BDCP running a pair of Sundown SA-8v2 D2's. The amp is tuned to put out aprox. 1000-1200W to these subs.

Now considering BOTH amps are being run EXTREMELY well below their rated power would you not expect them to run extremely cool?

Well that's not the case. The AQ gets pretty da*n hot and the RF gets SO HOT that you can't even touch it for more than 2 seconds before getting burned. This just doesn't make any sense.

And just today the RF threw itself into thermal protection during a road trip. A simple off/on got it going again, but how in the HE*L could this amp be getting THAT hot to shut itself off when it's only being ran at LESS THAN 1/3rd it's full power?

The AQ has never shut itself off but still a little concerned that it's getting so hot when being ran at less than 1/2 it's rated power as well.

Any advice?

ill trade you my t2000 for your 2500 my t2000 could run at .5 ohms and not get hot //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif lol

 

[maylar 10+ year member]

Well the general theme here seems to be fans so maybe I'll try that out one of these days.
And everyone talking about it being summer and 115 degree outside...I live in Victoria, BC and it doesn't get THAT hot here. Its only 66-70 degrees here today

To comment any further then, we'd need pics of your install. Here's a couple of things to consider..

Convection cooling works best if the amp is mounted with heatsink fins vertical. Hot air rises, and the air will flow naturally "up" the fins. It makes a difference. You also need clear space around the amp for air to circulate. Even though you're running way below rated power the amp still needs cooling air.

Most cars draw outside air from the front and circulate it through the trunk to the outside. It's important to keep the cabin filter clean and not obstruct the flow of cabin air into the trunk. A closed trunk on a bright summer day can get mighty hot, and your amps will always be hotter than ambient air temp.

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

To comment any further then, we'd need pics of your install. Here's a couple of things to consider..
Convection cooling works best if the amp is mounted with heatsink fins vertical. Hot air rises, and the air will flow naturally "up" the fins. It makes a difference. You also need clear space around the amp for air to circulate. Even though you're running way below rated power the amp still needs cooling air.

Most cars draw outside air from the front and circulate it through the trunk to the outside. It's important to keep the cabin filter clean and not obstruct the flow of cabin air into the trunk. A closed trunk on a bright summer day can get mighty hot, and your amps will always be hotter than ambient air temp.

It's not the most magnificent of installs but it's still a bit of a work in progress. And I'm not the richest person either. So try not to bash me too hard.

Also. Another strange thing I noticed about this amp is that it only seems to get really hot on the side with the speaker terminals...The other side will get hot too but it takes WAYY longer to get that way. Whereas the terminal side will be hot within like 10-20 minutes of moderate use.

View attachment 26544171

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

ill trade you my t2000 for your 2500 my t2000 could run at .5 ohms and not get hot //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif lol

As much as I would love a cold amp that's nowhere near a fair trade haha

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

Yea fan it and if it dont work try ice pack n if that still dont work time for new amps..

Yeah these amps are like 2 months old, not even. So they're not even close to being done for.

 

[jockhater2 10+ year member]

weird. My exile X5 i ran at soft clip. And it had no fans. And it made it an hour on a 90 degree day playing decaf before shutting down due to heat.

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

weird. My exile X5 i ran at soft clip. And it had no fans. And it made it an hour on a 90 degree day playing decaf before shutting down due to heat.

Well it certainly took a long time for it to shut off. It was probably at least 2-2.5 hours of loud playing. But I just didn't think the amp would be capable of getting that hot while run at such low power. And even after it did shut off all I did was turn my HU off and right back on again and it played no problem. Of coarse I turned the bass down for a while after that and rolled down all the windows to get a little extra airflow going.

Just really caught me off guard when it did shut off. But I've never played it that hard for that long before. But was still playing within spec of the subs power handling.

 

[Sl7rips]

Get 2 80mm 12v fans and a thin sheet of plexiglass about the size of the amp cover and cut it to fit. Then trace the fans on the plexi and cut the hole for the fans. Wire them up in a push/pull and you should notice a big difference. Just mount the amp upside down.

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

Get 2 80mm 12v fans and a thin sheet of plexiglass about the size of the amp cover and cut it to fit. Then trace the fans on the plexi and cut the hole for the fans. Wire them up in a push/pull and you should notice a big difference. Just mount the amp upside down.

Not exactly sure what your telling me to do with the plexiglass? Cut it to fit how exactly? Like a shroud over the entire amp? Or what? I'm a little confused.

 

[Sl7rips]

The whole bottom of the amp. Replace the metal with plexi

 

[bbeljefe]

How is that even possible? Does a CPU run cooler and more efficently the farther you push it? No. So why would my amp somehow run cooler if it was pushing 3600W rather than 1000W? That just doesn't make any sense at all. Where's the logic in that? Haha.
And if that's true theres no possible way for me to run my amp at full power with my current setup. I would blow the subs in 5 minutes. The only way would be for me to get 2 more SA-8v2 D2 and run them at 4ohms for 2200W on this amp.

Also I should mention I'm only running this amp at 1000W @2ohms right now...NOT 1. I could understand the amp getting hotter at 1ohm, but 2?

More efficient in the case of amplifiers means less electrical energy is turned into heat energy. Class D amps run at about 75-80% efficiently at best and the 25-25% of current they use turns into heat energy. Since they only operate at about 35-50% efficiency at low volumes, that means more current is turned into heat energy than into mechanical energy and thus, they can run hotter at half volume. Class A and A/B amps only achieve about 60% efficiency. Another thing that runs cooler and at higher efficiency at full tile is cordless tools. This is because the only way to lower the battery voltage and make the tool run slower is to attenuate the voltage with a circuit that, you guessed it, turns current into heat energy. If you've ever had a solid state variable speed drill trigger out of the drill, you'll notice a thick copper or aluminum heat sink that's there for keeping the attenuator (trigger) cool. You'll also get more work out of a cordless tool at full tilt that at half tilt, because a lot less energy is turned into heat. It's physics, really. Energy turns into something, it doesn't just evaporate.

I realize it sounds counter intuitive but if you understand electronic circuits, it's quite logical.

 

[gamehawk55 10+ year member]

The whole bottom of the amp. Replace the metal with plexi

You can't do that with this particular amp I dont think. The whole amp is like one giant heatsink. I think how this amp opens is from the top but I'm not going to replace the top plate cuz I like to be able to see the output and voltage meters.