| Article Index |
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| Antec VERIS A/V Cooler Review |
| Page 2 - Design and Style |
| Page 3 - In Operation and Conclusion |
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With Antec venturing further and further into the Home Theatre PC market, they’ve started to come out with some general Hi-Fi accessories as well, the
first of which is the VERIS A/V Cooler. Today we take a look and see if it’s any good.
With today’s high-powered audio and home theatre equipment, there’s a lot of heat generated, and when you have Hi-Fi components stacked on top of each other the problem escalates, with the lower components feeding hot air to the components above them. This problem can lead to devices overheating and cutting out, and/or premature hardware failure. Given the investment many people have put into their equipment, this is obviously not a problem you want to have.
So what is the Antec VERIS A/V Cooler?
The Antec VERIS A/V Cooler is a thin, lightweight device, about 4.6cm (1.8”) tall and weighing in at an even 2kg, which is designed to sit on top or in between Hi-Fi components. On the top of the A/V Cooler is a silver brushed aluminium plate embossed with the Antec logo, while underneath there are two blower fans that draw air from underneath the unit (i.e. take the heat from whatever it’s sitting on) and direct that hot air out the rear of the cooler.
The main section of the cooler sits slightly elevated on top of four small feet to allow the fan intakes underneath the do their job effectively. The front two feet have a small silver ring on their base to fit in better with the styling of other typical home theatre hardware, so coupled with its subtle and rather understated home-theatre-esc styling you can have your A/V Cooler sitting above your amplifier and below your DVD player without disturbing the professional appearance of your setup. All four feet are also garnished with rubber soles to prevent any unwanted vibrations.
On the front of the A/V Cooler is the power switch, which has been nicely camouflaged into the lines of the unit so it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb and ruin its looks. It’s a 3-way switch with Low/Off/High settings from left to right respectively. On ‘low’ the fans will run at 1200rpm and move a total of 5.5cfm of air, on ‘high’ this gets ramped up to 1600rpm and 8.0cfm of air, which may not sound like a whole lot when compared to some PC fans and coolers, but it should be more than enough to make a significant difference to the running temperature of your home theatre gear. A power light is provided on the front with a not too overpowering blue LED, bright enough so you know it’s there, but not so bright that it makes your projector setup look weak in comparison, unlike what some manufacturers like to do with their high-intensity LEDs.
When the A/V cooler is running it’s supposed to be whisper quiet, even on its high speed setting, but sadly our demo unit produced a very noticeable and annoying vibration noise on both fan speeds. No matter what part I touched I couldn’t find what was vibrating to make it stop. It did stop when I turned the unit up vertically, but that isn’t exactly a practical solution. Given that Antec products generally have a very high build quality, I’d hope this is just a one-off occurrence with the particular unit we’re looking at here today.
It’s not unusual for Antec to focus on the little things that make a product just that bit more enjoyable and easier to live with. In this case they’ve put some thought into the power supply for the A/V Cooler, making it a detachable cable so it’s easier to get untangled when it bonds with the typical matrix of cables behind your stereo setup, as well as making the power pack itself a very slender unit that won’t block any other power points on your power boards.
The frame of the VERIS A/V Cooler is built to be very sturdy, making it a rather solid unit, so you can place your other stereo equipment on top, confident that nothing will break. As a basic test we put a complete midi-tower computer system on top of the A/V Cooler and it took it without so much as a creak. We decided not to test its limits because we had to give this back in a few days, but sufficed to say, it seems to be built very strong.
In Operation:
To test out the VERIS A/V Cooler, there was no better choice than some actual A/V equipment. So i took it home and ran up our Kenwood 6-channel amplifier, which sits underneath a DVD player and gets nice and warm to say the least. I measured its temperature on top after an hour of running without the A/V cooler to be 53-degree Celsius. Installed the A/V Cooler in between the amp and the DVD player, and after about 30 minutes of operation and again took its temperature to see it had dropped nicely down to 37-degrees Celsius, which although still warm-ish is a massive drop in temperature, and as the amp had been working quite hard I think that’s an excellent result.
Conclusion:
The VERIS A/V Cooler retails online for around AU$135, which may be a little bit much considering it’s essentially just two fans mounted in a frame, but when you take into account its great style and typically high build quality you’d expect from Antec, it begins to make more sense.
One problem we found was that the size of the unit is a bit large for some current day amplifiers and A/V equipment, which are coming out in a more compact style these days. Some form of adjustable or moveable feet on the bottom would be a welcome inclusion in any future versions or revisions. Or perhaps make available a smaller version altogether.
Overall it’s a very stylish unit that will fit in with the styling of your home theatre setup no matter how old or new it is, it’s also extremely well built and solid so will be able to easily take some weight on top of it. Not to mention it does its job extremely well, which is the most important thing I believe. As mentioned before, the test unit we had produced an annoying and rather loud vibration noise when the fans were on, but I’d like to be an optimist and hope it was only this unit and not every one that’s out there, because if it’s all of them it really does ruin the whole thing.
OzHardware Rating – 7.5/10
This product can be purchased online at www.techbuy.com.au (Direct Link)
