Well, I've thrown in the towel and decided that whatever my the cause of heat issue, it seems to primarily point back to the Xigmatek HDT-S1283. However great everybody else thinks HDT is, it's not working for me. I'll go with the flat, thin base on the heatsink from now on. I did notice that BenchmarkReview updated their thermal interface material test to 80 from 33 and included method and enthusiast ratings for the TIMs.

I've gone ahead and ordered a Prolimatech Megahalems with...