Do I need active cooling in my cab?

[Jamesbeat]

I'm building a pseudo-bartop cabinet.
It's a little larger than an average bartop, because I intend to mount it on a piece of furniture to make it an upright.
the reason I'm doing it this way is so that it is able to be taken down into two pieces for ease of transport.

The electronics will consist of a Raspberry Pi, an LCD monitor, and a small amp.

Since I'm using a Raspberry Pi instead of a conventional PC, all of the components are devices that would be passively cooled under normal circumstances.

My question is whether this still applies when the components are housed together in a box, along with their respective power supplies?

Should I add vent holes to my case, or even a fan?

I'd like to avoid a fan if possible, partly to avoid noise, but mainly to avoid dust being sucked into the cabinet and contaminating the screen.
It would also be inconvenient to power a fan with the setup I have in mind.

Similarly, I'd like to avoid ventilation holes if possible, although that wouldn't be as bad as having a fan.

What should I do?

[Vigo]

How about add a ventilation hole in the back using one of those computer fan filters? Nice passive ventilation, and if you find it is getting too hot, you can easily toss in a computer fan after the fact and still avoid dust.

[ed12]

u might want to rember the pi run's hot
if u go to the noob's fourm
u will see ppl saying get a fan on it..
with out the fan my pi run's hot
with the fan it run's alot cooler

ed