MSI x58 Pro IOH extremely hot. Please help

[yert*]

I have an MSI x58 Pro board (ms-7522) and the northbridge (IOH) gets WAY too hot. MSI did a terrible job and the heatsink they put on here is pathetic. It's secured by plastic pins and I'm not sure how good the contact is to the chipset. Anyway, I added a cpu cooler and the temps get so hot now I have to use a regular fan and set it up against my pc case to get the temps down on the chipset. Everything else is fine. I have my core i7 920 oc'd to 3.4Ghz and the temps are fine for my room being ~83 degrees Celsius. The IOH temperature readout without my fan will go up tremendously and I've seen it hit 90 or 95 so I was like, well **** I'm gonna put this fan here. It's directly under the cpu and above the video card so it can heat up easily.

I called MSI and the tech support said regular temps should be around 70-75 and I believe this is under load... I called them again to get someone else and the guy said I could RMA the mobo. Well, I've been reading the interwebz and people are saying their MSI x58 pro boards are pretty hot too, though the avg temp is probably around 75. I don't want to go through the hassle of RMAing this, it's my gaming pc and I'll probably have to pay for shipping anyway only to get no results because it's just a crappy design. My side panel of my case doesn't fit anymore anyway so that's why I put a fan there to begin with :pinch:. I'll get a new case when I can afford one. The CPU cooler is huge (xigmatek dark knight). So, what can I do now as well as in the near future to get these temps lower. I know a new case with good fans/air flow will help a lot but the temps really spiked with this new cpu cooler.

[hjf288]

Is that your exhaust fan? jesus its tiny :/

http://www.velocityreviews.com/reviews/Ant...Slot-Cooler.php

Maybe you can use something like that on your top pci slot to pull hot air from the chipset heatsink?

Failing that remove the chipset heatsink, clean the thermal paste and slap some Arctic cooling MX2 or arctic silver 5 on there...

[yert*]

Yeah I was thinking I would put some new thermal compound under the heatsink. I'm planning on getting a different exhaust fan. It's only 80mm. I can get a 120mm. I may just buy some screws and bolts for the heatsink instead of using the plastic pins.

[yert*]

WOW. I just put some AS 5 on the thing and my temps dropped to 56! HUGE improvement. I still recommend buying a different board for all those ready to build a core i7 machine. The heatsink sucks. This was my FIRST ever pc build so now I have some experience and will look for the reviews and stuff online.

[yert*]

Any other suggestions? Should I RMA the board?

[giantpotato]

Any other suggestions? Should I RMA the board?

Why would you RMA the board if you fixed the problem?

[+shift. MVC]

The problem with your case is terrible airflow from what I can see regarding the size of your rear exhaust fan.