When I was ~11ish I found my desktop was overheating quite regularly. The solution I came up with on my $0 dollar budget was to pop the side of the case off and point a box fan into it. Worked like a charm…for a while.
I did this a lot as a kid, up to the point where I just didn’t care about having a case anymore. I completely removed the whole thing and put it on top of a rubber plate, and covered it after use with an old horizontal metal case from a 486 or something. I loved how confused my mother and then later my girlfriend would look when they saw me working/gaming in that total barebones setup. To be honest I have very fond memories of it and would definitely do it again if I didn’t have two small kids!
My current desktop setup uses a mining rig frame and tends to get the same confused looks from people.
I have it setup that way because there are no motherboard options for my CPU which allow for sufficient spacing between two triple slot GPUs to provide adequate airflow.
Yup. I tried this on a whim on a self assembled AMD K6 and it worked. Without that 'fix', compiling the Linux kernel would fail. Compiling the kernel and making GNU Chess play itself at highest levels were my standard stress tests.
This box wasnt completely self assembled in the sense the CPU was already mounted on the motherboard. Redoing the heat sink with thermal paste fixed the problem, mostly.