Installing A Fan In An Arcade Cabinet

With most current arcade games being powered by computers, arcade cabinets can get quite hot these days. Making sure that you have adequate cooling in your cabinet can help prevent your game from overheating. In this post, we’ll discuss how to install a fan in your arcade cabinet so you can increase the longevity of the components inside.

Installing A Fan In An Arcade Cabinet

First, we must decide what size and type of fan that we want to use. We typically like to use a 4″ fan that uses either 5 or 12 VDC. Since DC voltage is commonly used in arcade games, it is usually easy to locate some power wires to tie the fan into. Also, we recommend getting a fan that has ball bearings if you are worried about the noise level of the fan in your cabinet.

Let’s take a moment to discuss the concept of cooling. It is the job of a fan to move air through your cabinet. The idea is to draw cooler air in and exhaust warmer air. Most of us learned in high school that hot air is less dense than cold air which causes it to rise. So if you install a fan in the bottom of your cabinet, you probably want that fan to draw the cooler air in. Conversely, if you have a fan at the top of your cabinet, you probably want that fan to exhaust the warmer air out.

With the concept of cooling in mind, let’s pick a location for our fan. The most important thing is to make sure you pick a location where you can easily wire up power to the fan. A fan is no good unless you can get power to it. It’s also good to place your fan somewhere inconspicuous where it doesn’t interfere with other components in your cabinet. If you have small children, make sure that it is difficult for them to gain access to it. If the fan exhausts out, make note of what it might be blowing on. Some people don’t like hot air blowing on their legs.

Once we’ve picked a location, it’s time to trace the fan. With the fan in place, take a writing utensil and trace around the fan. Please note that we will not be cutting out this line. This is just to give you an idea of where to cut your ventilation hole. We typically use a 4″ hole saw with a corded drill to cut our ventilation hole out. Line up the hole saw in the middle of our traced outline of the fan and begin to drill till you have made it all the way through the material you are cutting. You have now successfully made a ventilation hole for your fan.

After we have cut our ventilation hole, we can now mount the fan into place. Place the fan inside the traced area we marked before we drilled our ventilation hole. If you have a fan cover, place it first before the fan. Take some screws and screw the fan down to the cabinet. Remember to get screws that are long enough to go through the screw holes on the fan and make contact with the cabinet. You have now successfully mounted the fan in your cabinet.

With the fan mounted, we must now wire power to the fan. Take the wires coming from the fan and strip them. If you are getting voltage directly from the power supply we suggest putting the fork type terminals on the ends. These easily slide under the screws of most switching power supplies. Once you have wired up your fan, you are ready to test. Plug the game in and see if you have a spinning fan. If your fan spins then you have successfully installed a fan in your arcade cabinet.

Before we finish our project, you might want to place either gutter mesh material or a perforated aluminum/steel sheet over your fan to keep people from putting objects in it. This also has the added bonus of making your fan installation job look more professional. You can get these items at most major hardware stores. It’s not a necessity that you do this but it does add a nice finishing touch to your project.

Installing a fan in your arcade cabinet can increase the longevity of your arcade components. Keep your cabinet cool and it should help you enjoy your arcade game for years to come. If you have any questions or suggestions please post them in our comments section below.