I think it's more dangerous to run without the fence.. If the AGP card gets pulled out of it's slot in the slightest, and two of the traces on the connector bridge, you are looking at a 3.3V short circuit which will blow your DCDC card, and probably every other thing in the cube. If you get lucky, maybe you only blow up the video card and the AGP riser. If it's too hot, put a fan on it. None of the desktop temperature displays measure video card temperature. If you dont have a remote thermocouple for thermistor temperature monitor, try running the cube for at least an hour on your most graphic task, ie 33D game or movie playback. Then shut the cube down and pull the core, can you touch the heatsink of the GPU for at least a few seconds without 3rd degree burns? If not, it's too hot and needs a fan., or accept that it may only last weeks - months How hot is the DCDC card? or the rest of the parts in that area? Anything over 60-70C ( 155F) is getting thing too hot for reliable operation.