I had a problem similar to yours in my last house. I converted an upstairs bedroom into a HT room. The bedroom had previously been adequately cooled by the upstairs central AC system, but between closing up the room, adding all of the heat-generating HT gear, and keeping the room filled with warm bodies for hours at a time made it sauna-like, especially in the summer.
I had one HVAC contractor suggest a mini-split system, another suggested adding a return and upping the tonnage on my upstairs AC unit. Both options were extremely pricy, and both options would increase the noise level in the room substantially.
I ended up putting in long speaker cables and moving every piece of gear but the display into a closet in the room. I lined the closet with Sonex, and put a couple of quiet computer muffin fans in the closet to stir up the air. I then vented the closet with 4" ducting that ran to a Nutone in-line fan up in the attic. An in-line fan is installed as part of the duct, not in the room's ceiling, so you can put the fan far enough away that there is no fan noise in the room, only the slight sound of the air intake at the duct.
This completely solved my problem. Hot air from the equipment was removed from the room before it could ever affect the room occupants, pressure in the room was reduced to the point that the original house AC was adequate again, the noise level in the room was not appeciably increased, and total dollar outlay (including the long cables) was about 1/10th of the cost of AC work.
Try it before you spend big bucks on air conditioning.
I had one HVAC contractor suggest a mini-split system, another suggested adding a return and upping the tonnage on my upstairs AC unit. Both options were extremely pricy, and both options would increase the noise level in the room substantially.
I ended up putting in long speaker cables and moving every piece of gear but the display into a closet in the room. I lined the closet with Sonex, and put a couple of quiet computer muffin fans in the closet to stir up the air. I then vented the closet with 4" ducting that ran to a Nutone in-line fan up in the attic. An in-line fan is installed as part of the duct, not in the room's ceiling, so you can put the fan far enough away that there is no fan noise in the room, only the slight sound of the air intake at the duct.
This completely solved my problem. Hot air from the equipment was removed from the room before it could ever affect the room occupants, pressure in the room was reduced to the point that the original house AC was adequate again, the noise level in the room was not appeciably increased, and total dollar outlay (including the long cables) was about 1/10th of the cost of AC work.
Try it before you spend big bucks on air conditioning.