Warm to the touch is normal. Too hot to rest your hand on the top grille, unexplained shutdowns, or a smell of hot dust is not, and Indian summers plus a closed TV-unit cabinet is exactly how receivers die young.
What every manual asks for and every cabinet ignores: clear space above the unit, because the top vents do the real work of moving heat out; an open back so warm air has somewhere to go; and some airflow across the whole thing. An AVR is a set of amplifiers in a metal box, and amplifiers convert a fair share of what they draw into heat. Seal that box into a cabinet with a glass door and it becomes an oven with a volume knob.
The order I fix it in:
Open the cabinet door during use. Even a few centimetres changes the airflow, and it costs nothing.
Never stack. A set-top box or a streaming device sitting on top of the AVR is the classic sin, because it sits directly over the vents that matter most. Move it beside, not on. The AVR does not appreciate a hat.
Add quiet cabinet fans if the furniture cannot change. Small thermostatic fans exhausting out of the back or top of the cabinet cost little and can drop the internal temperature substantially. We fit them routinely in built-in cabinets.
In rooms without air conditioning, give the reference-level sessions a cooler slot in May and June. Late evening rather than mid-afternoon. It sounds trivial; the capacitors do not think so.
Why it matters beyond the immediate scare: persistent heat ages electrolytic capacitors and amplifier output stages faster than anything else in normal use. Thermal-shutdown episodes are the AVR's final warning, not a quirk to live with; each one means the internals were at their limit. An AVR that runs merely warm in a ventilated space can last well over a decade. The same unit cooked in a closed cabinet through three summers will not.
Send us a photo of the cabinet with the AVR in it and I will tell you whether it needs a fan, a door left open, or a rethink of the furniture.
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