re: Fans. Seem to be a mixed blessing.
I will readily concede that the box needs to be blown out once in a while to keep the dust bunnies at bay. I use a combination of a vacuum cleaner and one of those cans of air for blowing things around. I haven't had any luck fitting some kind of filter on the inlets.
I have an Intel board, so I use a utility that tracks temperature for me inside the box.
