I drive my 690 with a pair of Klipsch speakers. They are a highly reactive load. My amp gets VERY hot. I opened it up and cleaned the air passageway for the cooling system, took a toothbrush and also cleaned the blades of the fan. There was a LOT of dust buildup in there, and I can see why it went into protection mode once in a while.
BTW You can hold down the speaker A (or) B button for a second or two, and it will go into LOW IMPEDANCE mode. You will not be able to use both A + B speakers at the same time this way, but I found the amp to run cooler when I set it up this way. I can still run the surround modes in the low impedance mode too.
I hope this helped somewhat.
Jackie Krieg
May 2008