I can't speak to whether Onkyo is crap or not, but I can say that keeping my stereo rack cool was a design priority, since my wife insisted that we not see any of the gear in the cabinet.

As I mentioned on the secondary-gadget thread, I bought a CoolerGuys kit which is now built into my stereo cabinet. My amp is a Pioneer SC-25 (the new one is the SC-35 or SC-37), using class D amplifiers that are much more efficient and thus put out a lot less heat. Despite this, heat in the cabinet is enough that the fans will be running if I've had everything on for more than an hour.

We'll see how long everything lasts, in the end, but I decided to make cooling be a priority.