Quite a meager amount of heatsink surface area for an 11 channel amplifier. The fact that the fans don't come on when the receiver is hot enough to cook an egg is boggling. There's more heatsink surface area in the Yamaha RX-V659 (older 7 channel mid range AVR) and even a Niles SI-275 (a little 75 watt per channel stereo amplifier). This isn't an impressive showing for a $3500 AVR.
Although $3,500 does sound expensive, we can also explore the alternatives:
The least expensive 11-channel AVR is the Denon x6700h for $2,600 but is
never in stock so let's just assume it doesn't exist.
For separates, we have the $1,600 for
IOTAVX cinema processor but no room calibration plus $1,100 IOTAVX 7-channel amplifier plus a cheap 4 channel amp for overhead speakers and and you're just over $3,000 but without Dirac or Audyssey I wouldn't get it - they could add Dirac for an extra $300 to the price of the unit or give the consumer the option of upgrading.
So it appears that Sound United has done a great job of market research to price accordingly. The good news is that the
Onkyo TX-RZ50 9 channel AVR with Dirac is launching this month for $1,100 so maybe they'll be the first to sell an 11-channel amp for under $2,000 with Dirac? Or sister company Pioneer can sell an Elite 11-channel AVR with Dirac for $2,000.