Quote Originally Posted by mouawad View Post
i've removed the heatsink on 2 boards now, they come off pretty easy with a hairdryer to heat up the gunk. some gentle lateral twisting and you shouldn't be in danger of removing the NB

i put a mcw30 onto mine and get ~31c under load with 1.5v - it's well worth it if you have a water loop running anyway.
Did you just remove the heatpipe thing, or did you remove the IHS too on the northbridge? The big grey one that looks like Intel CPU IHS.