IOH Temp - Obsession, Over Reaction, Or A Real Reason For Concern

Question

Many of us have concerns over what is an acceptable IOH temp at idle & full load. Please, no rants, tangents, or bashing. If you feel your temp is too high, lets keep everything constructive, & let's all work together to get it fixed. To date, we have two types of boards to consider, those with push pins, & the others with machine screws. A simple test to see if your IOH temp may benefit from some form of a mod, a gentle but firm downward pressure on the IOH heatsink after it is fully warmed up, it may take 15 seconds or so before any reaction, but does the temp start to decrease? By how much? If around 10c reduction, increasing the downward pressure by hardware modification may be an option.
Before taking this too far, what 'is' too hot? If we can believe the manufacturer of the chip, 100c is it's max. limit. For everyday use at full sustained load, from what I can gather from Intel, 95c Tcontrol appears to be the 'magic' upper limit without any possible long term degradation or data corruption. Anything at or below that, as per them (meaning Intel), should have no effect on the chip's lifespan. The jury is still out, & only time will tell. Details can be obtained by reading the Intel X58 Express Chipset Thermal and Mechanical Design Guide of March 2009.
For those that wish to take further steps to reduce their IOH temps, these existing threads have a 'lot' of useful information on how to, what with, & where it can be found.
References; (note Reply #38 by mighty in Scotslad's thread) Scotslad https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=124752.0
                 evr999 https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=126885.0
                 Dankirk2 https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=129339.0
Also, voice your concerns if you feel it necessary to MSI Tech. Support. Depending on your location, USA & UK http://ocss.msi.com/ other areas of the world http://support.msi.com/ Keep in mind, MSI is 'very' aware of our concerns, & they are making changes. I've seen them on a couple of recent boards I have assembled. 

Answer 1

Funny you should ask... At about the same time that the Xserve was discontinued, we also lost our channel rep of nearly 14 years. Right now we are not sure who our rep is. I have however, sent this to as many people in Apple that I could think of. And I plan on continuing to reach out to as many as possible.
The sad reality is that this decision is impacting customer deployments and the future of customer installations. Apple strives for market share and loves to tout those numbers. But the numbers we fought for over these last eight years are going to disappear.
As much as this impacts our business, we are making up for it in enterprise deployment of systems. We will survive and lead in our geographic area. I do not fear that. But OS X Server is a UNIX server and with it has come all of the benefits of a UNIX system, including legitimacy in a data center. The Intel Xserve cemented this reality because of its hardware configuration and form factor. Yes, we have G4 and G5s still in service. But those are mostly in all Mac shops that understand the benefits and can work around the buzz word limitations. But fortune 100/500 IT departments did not really get on board until the release of the Intel server.
Still beating the drum to raise awareness. Spread the word and talk to your Apple reps.
Also, ask about the direction that Apple's Enterprise team is going. If the news I hear is correct, then our fears about all things pro and enterprise going away are likely true.