Upgraded to a Nova from my Uniti2. Love the sound and the extra oompah but seems to like shutting itself down after an hour, hour/half playing at around 60% volume. I know from similar posts that they run hot but wondered if my experience is unusual. The nova sits on an atacama glass unit which is very open and not boxed in at all. Thanks.
Shouldn’t be doing that, especially if your old uniti was fine before hand and with the same speakers. I suggest a call to your dealer
There was thread not all that long ago. IIRC came down to speaker cables. I’ll see if I can find it.
My nova runs Hot one day and cold the next no change other than the day of the week weird and would love to know why . was thinking can you get a HRT mains lead ?
Found it.
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What’s your speaker cables?
QED silver anniversary XT with Focal aria 926 speakers.
Hmmm. I am not familiar but the website seems to say that they are braided, normally a red flag. Did you use them with the Uniti2?
In the other thread mentioned by @PW42 the issue in the first post was never resolved as far as I remember. The cables were Witchhat Phantom, which one would expect to be fine. Yet the Nova still ran too hot, and I don’t think the reason was ever figured out or posted. But airedog’s overheating was genuinely solved by switching from the AQ cables to NACA5, and he confirmed this several times later.
So it could be either, but if possible I’d first try other cables that are known to work well, preferably NACA5 just to be sure. At least if it still overheats with NACA5, you will have a much better argument to make with your dealer 
An hour at 60% with the Arias is surely not acceptable if cables are ruled out.
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Speakers are fine; speaker cable could be an issue, as mentioned, but first another thing to try: is Server Mode enabled under Settings/Other Settings in the Naim App?
If so, try switching that off (unless you are using Nova as a server!)
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Server mode or a connected usb drive will cause it to run warm but certainly not enough for it to shut down
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Yeah I was thinking the same. I have both constantly on on my Star and have not had any issues.
I am not reading here how hot it is running though.
It’s good to rule that out first, though, as it may help while other issues are explored
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My Nova drives an external power amp, so there is no speaker cable. Server mode is off. Some days it runs cool and some days it runs so hot that I feel bound to put it into network standby overnight (which cools it right down). It’s not related to how much I played it during the day either. Nor to the ambient temperature. And the Nova sits on a glass shelf in the clear with a cool-running NAT05 XS in the space below the Nova.
I think there is more to this Nova running temperature thing than anyone has been able to explain to me yet!
Best
David
I would definitely cast some suspicion towards those speaker cables. As Suedkiez mentions above, previous similar overheating/shutdown situations have been solved by changing to more suitable speaker cables (e.g. NACA5) so I would speak to your dealer and see if they can lend you a suitably long set (min 3.5m per channel, but preferably longer). Clare’s suggestion to switch off servers mode (unless you’re using it) is a good one too; the combination of summer temps, server mode and less than ideal speaker cable could all combine to create the issue where it gets hot to the point of the thermal trip cutting in.
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David if the processing side of the Nova is working hard then these circuits can get really quite hot - much hotter than anything else, even the amp (unless you’re using unsuitable speaker cable) and IIRC these circuits are close to the casework which will be acting as a heatsink.
When one of my older 17" MacBooks is working hard the underside of the casework can get scorchingly hot - and that’s even with the fans running! It’s a worry, but I remind myself that it’s doing what it should do.
Checked that thanks and it’s off and no USB in use.
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It would be worrying if it is a problem of the model itself. The safest thing is that the problem is the cables
Yes, computer chips (CPU, GPU, the actual silicon stuff) can run comfortably at 90° for long periods. (With a bit of accelerated aging over years, maybe.)
However, I would really like to know what in a Nova could run so hard for longer periods. I don’t know, which chips there are in detail, but I guess they have less power than a laptop CPU. Maybe some high-res DSD processing takes more than CD-rates, and it might be indexing a USB drive in the background… or there might be a software bug, which makes the processors run like crazy.
But “cool 1 day, hot another” seems a bit strange, unless you find obvious differences in use. (Source selected, or format of material played back, these kind of things.)
PS: Sorry, wrong reply - should go to Richard’s last post. Won’t delete, not to create even more confusing.
I’ve been thinking … I had a Nova on loan while waiting for the 252 and was running it into the 300. And I remember that it also got occasionally very warm, some would call it hot maybe, so that I once asked the dealer if that’s normal. It was not too hot to touch though and did not shut off.
The temp seemed not connected to some particular activity as far as I could see, I think I also noticed it once when not playing, and I recall that I did wonder what the hell it was working so hard for.