[vanman]

Posted:7/17/2010 3:26:00 AM # 7 After much thought and not being happy with the prospect of a long wait for a replacement board, I decided I had nothing to lose by doing some investigation and removing the heatsink/heatpipe assembly. Having done so I believe I have found the cause of the problem as you can see in the picture links below.
Rampage III board with the heatsink/heatpipe assembly removed
Close-up of the X58 chip with the heatsink/heatpipe assembly removed
Underside of the removed heatsink/heatpipe assembly
Close-up of the underside of the X58 heatsink on the heatsink/heatpipe assembly Only a 3rd of the die on the X58 chip had any thermal compound on that was actually making any contact with the heatsink which is why it would have been overheating so quickly and why putting pressure on the heatsink caused the temperature to return to normal as it then made proper contact with the top of the die. So this is a factory assembly QA issue.

My next step will be to clean off whatever that yellow thermal compound gunk is that's already on there and apply some Arctic Silver 5 or Arctic Céramique instead (whichever I find works best). I'm 99% sure that doing so will then solve the X58 chip overheating problem on my board. Hopefully this will save me from having to RMA the board. I'll report back again with the results once I've done this.