The Ikea Lack shelf has popped up many times and in many different forms as a media storage solution. Using Matt's Lack shelf hack as inspiration, I created my own wall mounted floating version. The problem however, was that mounted on the wall and with the doors closed, the inside of the cabinet became extremely hot, not a good thing for all of my components. The solution? Take this one step further and turn it into a fan cooled media cabinet. Click through for more pics and instructions on how I did this....
How To: Turn a Lack Shelf into a Fan Cooled Media Cabinet
For this project I needed the following things:
The goal for this cabinet was to cycle air through without generating too much noise or changing the visual aesthetic of the cabinet. In order to do this, I mounted two fans in the bottom of the cabinet, one pulling air in and the other pushing air out. This way there would be a continuous flow of air through the cabinet to exhaust the hot air being generated by the components. Also, because they were mounted in the bottom, the fans are never visible.
In this particular case, the fact that Ikea furniture is cheaply made turned out to be a good thing. Not quite sure of what to expect I cut a big hole in the area that I wanted to place the first fan. The result was a nice hollow cavity where I could mount the fan without it protruding from either side.
After cutting out the hole, I mounted the fan with screws to the inside surface of the cabinet.
This was followed by a silver fan screen to make sure nothing fell into the fan from inside the cabinet as well as to hide the fan when the doors are open
Finally, everything was put back into place you would never know that the fans were even in there. At 8.7 dBa they can run all the time without being heard and you don't have to worry about your components overheating.
Comments (8)
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How did you power the fans? Are the connected through into your computer cases?
view Gursk's profile
Nice job, looks great!
view MattPDX's profile
What is the noise level of the fan? If it's noticeable even on low volume ...
view Khurt Williams's profile
Really beautiful setup. Is there any way you could describe how you powered the fans? I am truly surprised that I cannot find this information otherwise on the internet. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
view liquidsense's profile
From what I've just read, a PC fan uses 5v for power.
I'm not really sure as to the amps it uses, but you could try an AC-DC adapter and just cut off the plug at the end, and connect the cables. You really shouldn't have problems using a bit more than 5v if that's what you can find. It'll just spin faster if you increase the power.
view rovr138's profile
PC Fans use 12v DC for power, however at the full 12v, most will be far too loud. also note that most fans won't start spinning until 4-6v.
I am doing something similar with an Ikea TOBO shelf (coincidentally I settled on the same fan line, I went with the 1200 RPM version though.) I haven't installed them yet but for power I'm using a 12V 1A AC/DC adapter (AKA Wall Wart) and then a PC Fan Controller that I had lying around so I could set the fans to the speeds (and quietness) that I wanted.
view Alex D's profile
I'm wondering what you did for the sliding doors. What material did you use? How did you make the grooves in the lack shelves? I want to cover up a small built in book shelf unit that is approx 4'x4' that protrudes about 6" from the wall. I want to mount the lack shelves all the way around and then put some sliding doors. I'm just trying to figure out the doors. Thank you.
view mush's profile
I did something similar to my TV stand from Ikea. To power the fans, I just got some old USB cables and cut the connectors off the ends, with a bit of wire left over for safe keeping. Then I cut the connectors off the fans, wired the fans with the USB plugs, then plugged those into various USB plugs throughout my media cabinet (Wii, Xbox 360, HTPC, etc.). They work like a charm and I never have to worry about anything overheating anymore, or a separate power supply.
view TheClayFox's profile