I received an Antec cooler and its been top of my reciever for a few weeks now. The way it works is it sucks hot air from your system and redirects the air out the back of the cooler.
Its got two big fans on the bottom that sucks in air from the vents of your receiver and has two speed modes. On the lowest setting its almost inaudible and on the high setting its quiet but not silent. On both settings you will not hear the unit's fans as soon as the volume from your speakers. I'm more strict on my systems noise requirement as my rig is a bedroom setup and i tend to leave stuff on while I sleep. I can get by on the low setting but I have a hard time sleeping with it on high. Oh well off mode is the best for sleep time, but if this was in your living room there would not be an issue. If you are familiar with the Antec TriCool fans, you have an idea of what the sound like.
Build quality is solid. Its made out of aluminum and plastic with the ac adapter out the back and rubber feet on the bottom so you don't scratch any components. I wanted to know how well it could handle something being stacked on it so I decided to stand on it while having it on. Im 5'10" 195lbs and no flexing or cracking. You can definetly stack your pre-amp, DAC or whatever on top with out worry of the unit breaking.
So how does it cool? well, it does what its supposed to do. It sucks in hot air and redirects it out the back. I dont think i have the best system to evaluate the cooling. I've got a pretty open TV stand and nothing on top of my receiver. I think natural heat dissipation through the vents is fine. Also my Yamaha rx-v659 is known to run cooler, I can rest my hand on top of it even after running it for hours. Good applications for this cooler would be if you had your gear stuffed into one of those A/V cabinets. If you could route the ducts outside to move all that hot stale air out. Also there are tons of people running desktop systems with their PC. Please do not block vents with other gear. Not only does it make the receiver hotter, it makes the component on top hotter as well. Id had to see an xbox 360 on top of a hot receiver. I wonder too if this would work will with those media center cases with tiny exhaust fans. I'm sure you could mod vents on the top of the case and use this cooler to help remove all the hot air trapped inside the case.
