Design flaw?

I'm not technical minded on computers, but something about this strikes me as off.

I have a Dell Studio XPS (can't remember the exact series) desktop; yes, I know, the truly technical inclined are probably cringing as they read this, I'm sure. Dell's habit of cramming things into as small a space as possible and calling it good design is legendary in all the worst ways. Anyway!

I've been having heat issues and due to the computer's design, I can't easily remove the card to blow out the shroud. I finally managed to dislodge a bar that Dell had put in apparently to support the card's weight- by my guess anyway- and found this:

The bar ran practically flush along the side of my video card, blocking all of the side vents and pinning some wires that ran from the DVD drive down to another part of the computer at the base against the side of the case, apart from the rest of the computer. Due to how close the bar sat to these vents, no duster could get to it and a pretty impressive amount of dust had accumulated between bar and card.

The card in question is of the Radeon 5700 series - not sure the precise one anymore, sorry. ^^; I think it's a 5750 or 5770.

Does this strike anyone as good/necessary design?

As someone who isn't especially hardware-savvy and hardly knows anything but HAS melted plenty of video cards via death-by-dust:

You start off your post with a disclaimer about how legendarily bad the design of Dells is and you still have to ask?

:p

Hey, doesn't hurt to ask if they may have actually had a good idea or not. XD I don't know enough about computers to guess either way if that bar may have a valid purpose after all.

The bar may be removable, a lot of Dell, Gateway and other PCs have little fancy bars and clips and such that aren't by any means necessary. I'd peek around and see if it just hooks into the case and you can remove it since greater airflow is always going to be better, and I can't think of ANY pc offhand that "needs" some sort've bar blocking off part of the video card, of all things. :)

Yeah, I managed to pry it entirely off finally. ^^; since there haven't been any votes for it serving any purpose beyond perhaps inspiring a future repair bill, I'm just leaving it off now. I'm with ya on that, Losian- can't think of anything that card needs more than the ability to circulate air better.