[Hampshire] More on overheating boxes

Hi all

Without wishing to resurrect a thread from earlier this week, my question
is - Would removing the number of peripherals (e.g. one optical drive, one
hard drive) inside the case reduce CPU temperature? Common sense tells me
it should - but then again I didn't appreciate that keeping the case
enclosed (i.e. not having any missing blanking plates) was also advisable -
so perhaps my common sense ain't up to that much!!

I have a box which overheats regularly - but (being still a bit of a rookie
with Linux) I don't like faffing about with the hardware configuration for
fear of needing to reinstall - which I don't want to do. Aside from the
overheating, it's a nice stable Ubuntu 7.04 install.

It might (as Sean suggested in an earlier thread this week) be to do with
too many fans. I can give that a whizz but my main worry is that (given
this was built around a pre-built motherboard bundle) - that the builders
haven't done a great job with attaching the CPU fan to the CPU itself. Is
there anything I can check for here without actually removing the fan?

Cheers
Rob