PCIe slot under video card, would it block the fan's airflow to use?

I have a new gaming videocard with 2 fans. It is quite large and blocks one pcie slot, but there is one above which is used and one below that is free.

I have a motherboard with a faulty sata controller and I need more than the 2 working ports.

I was thinking of buying a PCIe sata 3 card but this would have to be installed very close to one of the videocard fans. Would this have a negative effect on the card's lifespan? Or are they designed for this situation? It's an expensive new card.

At the moment I only need to plug in a dvd writer drive which would be fine with a slower sata port so I can buy a standard pci to sata + ide card, but it's hardly any cheaper and it would be old technology if I was going to plug in more hdds or ssds in the future.

Or should I go for a USB to sata converted and run it back though an empty card area of the back of the case.
What do you all think?

Update, I have been reading about pci-e extender cables, if I got one how could I mount the card in the case so it wont short circuit or move around?

If the motherboard already has faulty SATA controller, unless it's one of those older P67 motherboards, that's a sign that the rest of the motherboard may develop a lot of issues later on. But to answer your questions:

Yes having a card underneath the video card's fan does have a negative effect as it's blocking some of the air. None of the options you've mentioned so far sound particularly like good ideas. Before I can recommend alternatives, please answer the following questions:
1) What motherboard, case, and GPU do you have anyway?
2) How many hard drives, SSD, and DVD drives do you have connected to the PC now?
3) How many hard drives, SSD, and DVD drives do you want connected to the PC now?
4) Why can't you use the top PCI-E x1 slot?

Motherboard P67A-C43
GPU Asus Gtx 970
1 SSD + 1 HDD plus one DVD writer currently unplugged due to lack of working ports.

Top PCI-E slot is used for Audigy sound card

I guess the PCI sata 2 card would be fine for the DVD drive so maybe I should just get that.
It's a brand new expensive GPU so I don't want to do anything that could cause it to overheat.

Why not just turn that DVD drive into an external one? And you didn't quite answer question 2.

Sorry,

1 Sata SSD connected
1 Sata HDD connected
1 Sata DVD writer disconnected

Actually I think I might have an old PATA dvd writer somewhere, of course then I couldn't upgrade to a sata bluray in the future without buying extra sata ports.

I should have got the free mb replacement but it was so much effort to take everything out and put it all back again so I never did.

I noticed they have PCI-E extender cables, I could get one of those and then get the sata 3.0 pci-e card but how would I mount the card in the case?

Would having a PCI-E sata card take away some of the bandwidth to the video card?

I meant question 3. My mistake.

You leave the card dangling somewhere. Though the extender cables have the same issue as having a card: They're still going to block air flow to the video card. So that really won't help you either.

A PCI-E sata card will not take away bandwidth.

Oh well may as well just get a PCI sata 2.0 card, since I don't really need sata 3 atm for a dvd writer anyway.

Again, why not just get an external DVD burner? $15 gets you this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106389

Well if I upgrade I'd get a Bluray burner, anyway I ordered a sata 2 pci card so that will work for now anyway.

yeah go external on the dvd, I didnt buy a new dvd drive for my 2nd rig, as now days usb stick does the booting job.

If my dvd drive fails on my main rig I will probably replace with an external unit that is whenever needed.

Do you get problems with booting linux distros from a usb dvd/cd?

I often can't boot with many distros from usb using unetbootin or lili with a usb flash drive.

should be fine, now days 95% of linux installs I do in datacentres are done with a external unit.

DVD dont exist !

Using unetbootin or lili or something else with a usb stick works with some distros but with others it seems to only boot from cd/dvd.

I installed Mint from my Asus external usb BluRay drive. Computer read is from bios the same as when it's in a Sata slot.

A lot of ISOs nowadays are dual (dvd/usb), so you can just dd'em to either dvd or usb/flash. Of course, consult the installation guide for your specific distro.

The pcie extension cable is an interesting idea, and I'd thought about going that route before (and putting the card in an unused case expansion slot--one without an associated pci/e slot on the motherboard), but never felt confident enough to try. Now I have a full-ATX motherboard, so there are no unused expansion slots and I have enough pcie slots that it doesn't matter. :/

Pendrive works really well for making bootable Linux ISOs. I've used it with Ubuntu, mint, fedora, and Debian without any issues.

As to the original issue, I would really recommend upgrading the system to something newer, but why not try to ebay a p67? Quite a few in the $50+ range. Won't break the bank and no need to ghetto rig.