Hey, thanks for the suggestion!
I've ordered some metal grill covers which I intend to paint/clear coat and then attach on top of these externally mounted fans.

The covers will be here Thursday I think, though Amazon has been having some issues shipping for the dates that they've been promising. I bought the below Silverstone covers; I intend to tear out the filter portion and then enamel them with the dark green rustoleum and then satin clear coat:

If that ends up looking too amateurish or shoddy, I'll take you up on your suggestion about the thin fans for sure.
As an aside:
I really like the Asus Xonar DX that I bought. It was around $80~, not one of the super high quality $200 ones, but not the cheapest one they make. It required additional power from the PSU, which I wasn't used to. The thing that was really great about it was the driver disk: Instead of trying to load your computer with a ton of proprietary software and audio control panels, there was an option to just install the drivers and be done. I game and listen to tunes, but I'm not a fan of the environmental audio controls, sound editing, McAfee and other "junk" software that comes on most sound cards, notably from Creative. Also, on my last card which was a Creative X-Fi Titanium, windows 7 wouldn't even recognize it without a special driver from the Creative site! That was my last Creative card, even though I've been buying soundblaster products for probably ten years.
